Birth and Education 



were the beginnings of reading, writing, and arithmetic. 

 The rest of his knowledge and learning he accomplished 

 by himself. Like many men of action and enterprise, 

 like Brindley and Stephenson, he was, for the most 

 part, his own educator. 



Josiah's father, Thomas Wedgwood, did not leave 

 much money or property behind him. By his will, 

 dated 26th June 1739, he left to his eldest son Thomas 

 the Churchyard Pottery, and all his real estate, with a 

 provision for his wife for her maintenance and "the 

 proper bringing up of her younger children." Twenty 

 pounds were to be paid to six of them on their reaching 

 twenty years of age. The eldest daughter Ann was 

 omitted, from which it may be inferred that she had 

 done something displeasing to her father ; and he could 

 not forgive her, even in his dying hours. 



Josiah was included amongst those who were to 

 receive twenty pounds on his coming of age ; and this 

 was the entire capital on which he began his industrial 

 and artistic career. As he himself afterwards said of 

 his fortunes : " I myself began at the lowest round 

 of the ladder." 



To recur again to Josiah's early education. Mr. 

 Leslie, afterwards Sir John Leslie, Professor of Natural 

 Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, was, in the 

 early part of his career, the tutor of Wedgwood's eldest 

 sons. He knew much of the history of the proprietor of 

 Etruria, and after his death, collected materials for his 

 biography. He says that Wedgwood's early education 



