Samuel John Galton Jr. FRS (18 June 1753 – 19 June 1832) was an English arms manufacturer. He was a member of the Lunar Society in December of 1785 and lived at Great Barr Hall, one of the meeting places for the Lunar Society. He also built a house at Warley Woods, and commissioned Humphry Repton to lay out its grounds.
Family life
Galton married Lucy Barclay (1757–1817), the daughter of Robert Barclay Allardice, MP, 5th of Ury. They would go on to have eight children together. His first born was Mary Anne Galton (1778–1856) who was a writer in the anti-slavery movement. She would marry Lambert Schimmelpenninck in 1806. Galton's second child was Sophia Galton who would go on to marry Charles Brewin. His first son, Samuel Tertius Galton (1783–1844) would also become a member of the Lunar Society. He married Violetta Darwin in 1807 and had a son named Francis Galton (1822–1911) who would go on to be a famous proponent of eugenics. Next would come Hubert John Barclay Galton (1789–1864), followed by Ewen Cameron Galton (1791–1800) who died at the age of 9. His last child was John Howard Galton who married Isabelle Strutt. They had a son named Douglas Galton (1822–1899) who became one of the royal engineers. He loved birds as well, publishing three book volumes about them.
The Lunar Society
Samuel Galton joined the Lunar Society in December of 1785. Galton would join the Lunar Society as an in-person replacement for Erasmus Darwin, who remarried and moved away. He would be one of the fourteen members to be active during the height of the society.
Galton also had a great love for natural history, one of the subjects taught in Quaker schools. This, compounded with his love for animals, lead him to write many natural history books on them. His first set was The Natural History of Birds: containing a variety of facts ... for the amusement and instruction of children. This was a three-volume set of books intended for the education of children, specifically at first for his children. However, only one complete copy of this work exists in world libraries, specifically the Baldwin Library in the University of Florida. Some his notable experiments were that of color mixing, which he would publish on August 1, 1799 in Monthly Magazine.