[tacticalogic]

IIRC, geologist James Hutton is considered “the father of modern geology”, and estimated the age of the Earth at up to a billion years. This was in the late 18th century.

[RegulatorCountry]

OK, so now we're only up to a billion years, prior to Darwin, and this is only one man, Hutton, with no means, scientific or otherwise, to back up his theorizing.

Hutton was not in widespread acceptance as late as the U.S. Civil War era. Physicists believed the Earth to be at most 400 million years old at that time, and perhaps as few as 10 million years old.

That was the scientific consensus in Darwin's era, give or take 390 million years.