Jamberoo’s connection with the one of the world’s most influential family of scientists has been highlighted in a new book, An Intimate History of Evolution: The Story of the Huxley Family.

Written by Alison Bashford, Laureate Professor of History at the University of New South Wales, the book has been described as a “masterful biography” and recommended as a book of the year by The Economist magazine.

Henrietta Heathorn, whose father operated a brewery at the Woodstock Mill near Jamberoo, met Thomas Henry Huxley in 1847, just four years after she arrived with her family from England.

Huxley was visiting from England with Charles Darwin.

He met Henrietta at a ball in Sydney and proposed at 3am. Eight years later, in 1854 after he had established an income as Professor at the Royal Institution in London, they wed.

The two would “go on to found one of the great intellectual and scientific dynasties of their age”.

Thomas and Henrietta Huxley in 1882

“The Huxley family through four generations profoundly shaped how we all see ourselves. In innumerable fields observing both nature and culture, they worked as scientists, novelists, mystics, filmmakers, poets and – perhaps above all – as public lecturers, educators and explainers,” the book reveals.

In correspondence with Huxley and future letters to Darwin, it is obvious that Henrietta is an intellectual match to her husband. Huxley called his wife ‘Frau Professorin’ as she combined the twin roles of wife and academic assistant.

Huxley is credited with drawing the famous Ascent of Man diagram, which was intended to simply compare the skeletons of apes and humans, but unintentionally created a durable meme of supposed monkey-to-man progress.

In his book written in 2008 specifically about Nettie: The Evolution of Nettie Huxley 1825-1914, Martin Huxley Cooke writes: “TH Huxley sprang to prominence after the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species led to his famous exchange with the Bishop of Oxford at the British Association. The argument generated so much emotion that one of the participants fainted, and Huxley soon became known as Darwin’s Bulldog.

“His views might appear to conflict, therefore, with Nettie’s Moravian upbringing [one of the oldest protestant denominations in Christianity], but the couple worked hard towards finding a compromise.

“Huxley coined the term agnostic to describe his position and was always open to debate and to new evidence. Nettie, too, allowed her own beliefs to evolve, abandoning the idea of original sin and exemplifying in her own life the ways in which a Christian reconciliation with the new ideas might work.”

Thomas and Henrietta’s grandson, Aldous Huxley, wrote the dystopian futuristic novel Brave New World in 1931 and his The Devils of Loudon was infamously adapted for film by Ken Russell in 1971 (The Devils).

Aldous’s brother, Sir Julian, was a legendary biologist, helped found UNESCO, won an Oscar for his natural history films and taught David Attenborough how to shoot TV documentaries.

Another younger brother, Andrew Huxley, became Master of Trinity College Cambridge, President of the Royal Society and won a Nobel Prize for understanding the process of nerve electrical impulses that co-ordinate the central nervous system.

Stuart Richards, a member of the Kiama & District Historical Society, is currently doing some research and preparation work for a Heritage Display in Jamberoo (all based on being successful with grant funding).

He says there is more information regarding the Woodstock Mills in The History of the Illawarra and its Pioneers by Frank McCaffrey.

ABC Radio National journalist Robyn Williams, who lives in Gerroa, interviewed Alison Bashford about her book on The Science Show: It can be listened to here.