Early Life
Lucas was born in 1781 in Mecklenburg, now Shepherdstown, a small community along the Potomac River in Virginia located in far eastern West Virginia. He was the son of William Lucas and Susannah Barnes. Lucas came from a Quaker family whose roots stretched back to 1679 in Pennsylvania, though the family had recently relocated to Virginia.
Lucas' father, an American Revolutionary War veteran, owned slaves and large amounts of land. According to family legend, Robert's uncle, Joseph Barnes, built a steam-powered boat long before Fulton's invention. Robert received some early schooling in mathematics and surveying, skills which would prove invaluable to his future work.
Around the age of nineteen, Lucas moved to the Scioto Valley of the Northwest Territory, now Ohio. He was preceded by other family members, including two older brothers and a cousin. One brother would later become a general, while his other brother and his cousin would become Ohio legislators. The family bought large parcels of land; eventually the nearby town of Lucas was named for them. For his skill in recruiting troops for the Army during the increasing hostilities between England, France, and the U.S., Robert Lucas was made Captain in 1807. He was elected to the Ohio General Assembly for the first time in 1808 as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives. He was married to Elizabeth Brown, his landlord's daughter, in 1810. Lucas and his wife had a daughter, Minerva, in 1811. Through complex political maneuvering, Lucas was made a Brigadier General in 1810 or 1811.
Read more about this topic: Robert Lucas (governor)
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