The Lunar Men

See this link: The Lunar Men, Jenny Uglow.

Date marker: 1760. It pops up often in the book.

Chapter 2: read what Birmingham was all about, page 21 - 23. A very dynamic city. London, Edinburgh, and Birmingham?

Of interest, large proportion of movers and shakers during this period:

• Dissenters in England (specifically, Quakers); and,
• Scots

Geographic: large arc, Leeds to the north, very center of England, and then the arc swings south to the west, down to Manchester, and then southeast to Birmingham, via Stoke-on-Trent.

Darwin, Boulton, and Wedgwood: all born in the heart of England, all descended from "yeomen," small landowners and farmers. They came from different sides of the Midlands, where the counties curve around the Derbyshire Peak. 

• at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire, it extends into Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire.

On the road to Birmingham, one would meet Manchester manufacturers, Sheffield cutlers, Staffordshire potters, traveling together to protect themselves against highwaymen.

• glassworks, salt-pans, and potteries: clustered along the Firth of Forth
  

The Lunar Society of Birmingham:

• genesis: 1760 - 1775
• formally recognized by one of the original members: 1775
• ceased to exist: 1791
• others say it lasted until: 1813

Global dates/important events -- during the period of the Lunar Society:

• Seven Years War, 1756 - 1763: war between France and England for global domination; Britain, the big winner
• French and Indian War: colonists name for Brits fighting the French and their Indian allies in North America; Britain, the big winner
• American Revolution: first shots, April 19, 1775; declaration, 1776 -- 1783 (Treaty of Paris)
  
• King George III: 1760 - 1820
• 1789: recovers from his period of madness
• Fall of Bastille, 1789
  

Dates:

• 1757, last paragraph chapter 4, "The Doctor's Bag," for the first bond forged in the Lunar Society
• Erasmus Darwin and Matthew Boulton
• initially: overlapped almost exactly with war with France
  
• 1760 - 1830: first industrial revolution
• 1870 - 1914: second industrial revolution
• 1767: CO2 discovered
• 1774: oxygen discovered
• deaths
• Ben Franklin: 1790
• Erasmus Darwin: 1802
  
• William Small: 1734 - 1775 (devastating to lose this man); at College of William and Mary, mentored Thomas Jefferson); of malaria, 1775, contacted when visiting Virginia
  

Map of England

• the Midlands
• Peak District

Organization of the Book:

• Chapters 1 - 6: early days; introductions, bios of Darwin, Boulton, James Watt, Darwin as a physician, Boulton heading for Soho Mill,
• Chapters 7 - 8: the Lunar Society begins. The philosophers; Darwin "reaching out" to expand the circle.
• Chapters 9 - 14: interests; electricity, steam, canals, painting, magic and mechanics, fossils (Derbyshire, Derby Peak), chemical reactions;
• Chapter 15: instability; Seven Years' War (French and Indian War); Revolutionary War
• Chapter 16: romance; Darwin meets Rousseau
• Chapter 17: "vase mania," ormolu;
• Chapter 18: importance of machines
• Chapter 19: two deaths -- 1772, James Brindley dies; 1775, John Baskerville dies
• Chapters 20 - 21: Priestly studies air; James Watt moves to Soho Mill!
• Chapter 22: 1775 -- Revolutionary War; members find them on opposite sides politically; Small dies -- devastating to the group.
• Chapter 23: biology, plants, classifying, Carl Linnaeus first classifies plants; first of Cook's three voyages;, 1768 - 1771; searching for rumored continent at southern pole; first European to visit, map New Zealand; eastern coast of Australia
• Chapter 24: mining, Cornwall; for Boulton, 1779, arrival of William Murdoch;
• Chapter 25: more geology, Boulton, Joseph Black, John Hutton
• Chapters 26 - 28: home stretch; dotting i's, crossing t's; families, sons and daughters; the artists
• Chapter 29: England despondent; had lost war to the colonists;
• Chapters 30 - 33: protecting their interests; squabbles;
• Chapter 34: the various Lunar friendships had now stretched over many years;
• Chapter 35: still talking, corresponding, collaborating endlessly; many grand projects; never a single unit
• Chapter 36: friends are starting to face the onslaught of time; John Whitehurst, 1788, dies first, age 74. In 1789, the country cheers George III's recovery from madness.
• Chapter 37: July 1789, Fall of the Bastille, July, 1789 -- a bit more than a decade after the Revolutionary War
• Chapters 38 - 40: coming to an end; breaking up; many at peak of their individual achievements
• Epilogue: will place these notes at the very end (later)

Name: Erasmus Darwin

• Vocation: physician
• Location: near Newark-on-Trent, NE of Nottingham, northeast of Birmingham;
• born, 1731, Old Hall, Elston, ten miles NE of Nottingham
• nearest town, Newark-on-the-Trent; river to Hull!
• elementary school: Chesterfield, twenty miles north; on the edge of the Pennines, close to the Yorkshire border
• Derby: northeast of Nottingham, near Newark -- known for its clock-making trade.
• medical training: Cambridge --> London --> Edinburgh (reminder: James Watt in Glasgow)
  
• Age, 1760:
• Disposition: polymath, gregarious, extrovert, hyperactive, athletic
• Wives
• Children
• Comments

Name:  John Whitehurst

• Vocation: clock-maker;
• Darwin and Boulton learn much about instrumentation and invention from Whitehurst
• Location: moved to Derby in 1736
• 1735: John Harrison perfected his famous chronometer
• the next big interest was electricity in the 1740s, and discovery followed discovery
• 1746: Leydon jar
• 1758: Benjamin Franklin shows up in Birmingham ,p. 59.
• Age, 1760:
• Disposition
• Wives
• Children
• Comments

 

Name:  Matthew Boulton (think Birmingham metal worker)

• Vocation: toy-maker; metal-worker
• Location: Birmingham, but married in Lichfield
• born 1728, Whitehall Lane, now Steelhouse Lane, northern fringes of Birmingham
• three years older than Darwin
• when Darwin was at Cambridge, Boulton setting up his "study"
• Boulton senior was a "toy-maker" -- Matthew followed in his footsteps; metal-trades;
• Birmingham: city where fortunes were made; a city of makers and traders
• Boulton senior had come from cathedral town of Lichfield, eighteen miles to the north of Birmingham
• iron workers and coal in immediate area
• friends/three mentors: the influential button-and hardware-maker Samuel Garbett, his partner John Roebuck, a pioneering industrial chemist, and the great printer John Baskerville
• Garbett: how to finance expensive projects
• Roebuck: science could pay
• Baskerville: art could be combined with experiment
• japanning, p. 23
• tall, dark, handsome; on the make
• married his distant cousin May, the daughter of Luke Robinson, a wealthy mercer with a farm at Whittington, three miles outside the city
• scooped a great deal of money and married into an influential family
• initially lived in Lichfield (home of Mary) but the moved back to Birmingham
• comes into contact with clockmaker John Whitehurst
• Age, 1760:
• Disposition
• Wives
• Children
• Comments

 

 

Name:  James Watt, seven years younger than Boulton
Vocation:
Location: Scotland; Greenock; west central lowlands of Scotland, northwest of Glasgow; truly far away;
Greenock: fishing village and then triangular trade with Glasgow
Age, 1760:
Disposition
Wives
Children
Comments

 

 

Name:  Josiah Wedgwood
Vocation: potter
Location: Burslem (becomes a metonym for the six pottery villages in the Midlands; around Stoke-on-Trent, almost midway between Birmingham and Manchester
Age, 1760:
Disposition
Wives
Children
Comments

 

 

Name: Benjamin Franklin

• Vocation: printer, and so much more
• 1757, age 51: arrives in London as agent for the Pennsylvania Assembly
• as a printer, eager to meet Baskerville; Franklin had subscribed to Baskerville's Virgil;
• Location: London, then Birmingham, then Europe
• Age, 1760:
• Disposition
• Wives
• Children
• Comments
• spent a total of 18 years in England as agent representing Pennsylvania
• first stay: 1757 - 1762, 5 years -- to handle a dispute with the Penn family, the proprietors of Pennsylvania, over taxation and governance; learned a lot about diplomacy
• second stay: 1764 - 1775, 11 years -- again, as the colonial agent, specifically for Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia, to oppose the Stamp Act and advocate for colonial rights; became prominent critic of British taxation policies; testified before Parliament; in London when tensions grew; left London when war became imminent
• later European service: 1776 - 1785: 9 years in France as US ambassador, securing critical French support during the American Revolution (again, the Scots and France against England)

 

 

Name:  William Small -- mentor to Thomas Jefferson
Vocation: Physician
Location: Scotland --> Birmingham --> William And Mary College (Thomas Jefferson) --> Birmingham (dies of malaria after return to Birmingham; contracted in Virginia)
Age, 1760:
Disposition: the glue that often held the society together; seems like he was a "fun" guy with whom to be
Wives
Children
Comments

 

 

Name: 
Vocation
Location
Age, 1760:
Disposition
Wives
Children
Comments

 

Name: Joseph Wright
Vocation: painter
pp. 6, 12, 18

Name: John Baskerville
Vocation: printer
one of Boulton's circle of friends
Baskerville's companion: Sarah Eaves, p. 57

Name: Samuel Garbett, highly influential
Vocation: button- and hardware-maker
big factory east of Edinburgh on Firth of Forth
one of Boulton's circle of friends
partnership culminated in 1760 in Scotland's first major ironworks by the river Carron in Stirlingshire

 

Name: John Roebuck
Vocation: partner of Samuel Garbett
big factory east of Edinburgh on Firth of Forth
partnership culminated in 1760 in Scotland's first major ironworks by the river Carron in Stirlingshire
one of Boulton's circle of friends

Name: Benjamin Huntsman, p. 57
Vocation: investor of fine crucible steel; fine steel needed by clockmakers and Boulton for his toys
Location: Sheffield
Age, 1760:
Disposition
Wives
Children
Comments

The first Lunar Society bond.

• 1757, last paragraph chapter 4, "The Doctor's Bag," for the first bond forged in the Lunar Society
• Erasmus Darwin and Matthew Boulton
• example of the author's ability to synthesize so many diverse facts:

Darwin had just published his first scientific paper which was published in the Royal Society's Transactions in early 1757, intrigued by discussions of electricity.

And around this time, 1775, Darwin did meet someone who shared his interests: Matthew Boulton.

The Robinsons, Mary Boulton's family, were among Darwin's patients and the two men were also admirers of John Baskerville, by now an innovative printer, to whose beautiful edition of Virgil they both subscribed, and friends of John Michell, an inspired natural philosopher and astronomer, whom Darwin had known in Cambridge and Boulton entertained in Birmingham.

But the chief bond between them was the love of invention and experiment. Very quickly they realized how they could complement each other: Darwin the university-educated theorist, Boulton the man with the technical know-how.

Equally outspoken, energetic and ebullient, they were two sides of a coin.

The first Lunar link had been forged.

 

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