Background
Born on 12 July, 1730 in Burslem, Staffordshire, the eleventh and last child of Thomas Wedgwood (d. 1739) and Mary Wedgwood (née Stringer; d. 1766), Josiah was raised within a family of English Dissenters, he was the grandson of a Unitarian minister and was an active Unitarian.
By the age of nine, he was proving himself to be a skilled potter. He survived a childhood bout of smallpox to serve as an apprentice potter under his eldest brother Thomas Wedgwood IV. Smallpox left Josiah with a permanently weakened knee, which made him unable to work the foot pedal of a potter's wheel.
As a result, he concentrated from an early age on designing pottery and then making it with the input of other potters.
His father, Thomas Wedgwood, was in the pottery business and his mother, Mary Stringer, was the daughter of a dissenting minister.