Family and Childhood
Francis Walker was the son of John Walker of Arnos Grove a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Linnean Society and the Royal Horticultural Society.Born into a wealthy and highly educated family Francis spent the years 1816 (when he was seven years old) to 1820 (when he was eleven) in Switzerland at Geneva, Lucerne and Vevey where the family party was joined by Madame de Staël, the poet Lord Byron and some Swiss naturalists gathered around Nicolas Théodore de Saussure. With his brother Henry (1825–1892), Francis collected butterflies on an ascent of Mount Pilatus in 1818 and so was an entomologist at age nine. In 1840 Walker married Mary Elizabeth Ford.
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