Charles Darwin and his wife, Emma, had ten children. Their family included William, Anne, Mary, Henrietta, George, Elizabeth, Francis, Leonard, Horace, and Charles Waring.
Two of the children died in infancy, while their daughter Annie died at the age of ten in 1851. Annie’s illness and death deeply affected both parents, and Darwin later remembered her with particular tenderness. Their youngest child, Charles Waring, was born in 1856 and died before reaching his second birthday.
The number is often misremembered as eight because two children died very young, or as nine because some accounts overlook one of the shorter-lived children. Several of Darwin’s surviving sons became notable in their own right: George became an astronomer, Francis a botanist, and Horace an engineer. Darwin was closely involved in family life and observed his children with the same intense curiosity he brought to natural history.