This is a compilation of information on the Lucas family of Northwest Ohio. I started this tree in the summer of 1989 with little more than stories told by my father and mother, Lawrence and Catherine Lucas, about family members of generations past. I found that with further questioning and memory jogging, they knew a great deal. They also remembered some timeless stories that should be preserved for future generations.
If you have seen one of my books of the Burkhardt Family Tree which I started in 1992, you will see many of the same people in both trees. There are three different connections between the Lucas and Burkhardt families.
This may give the impression that there was only a limited amount of families in northwest Ohio and one was limited on choices of mates. I believe that it had more to do with the fact that travel was more difficult 100 years ago and one did not meet many other people. Maybe it's just that our ancestors were all a bunch of great looking people and didn't need to look any further for a mate. That's why we're all so great looking - don't you agree?
I would like to thank several people without whom this tree would not have been possible:
This tree was started in 1989 with Uncle Bob Protsik's BASIC language programs running under MS-DOS operating system. I was working on my Computer Programming degree at the time so this was right up my alley! Each person was stored in a text file and pulled in order from an index file. In the Summer of 2000, I migrated all the tree information over to a database program called FoxPro. With the programming expertise of my coworker, George Graham, we were able to duplicate the layout of Bob's tree printouts.
Then the tree sat pretty much untouched from 2004 till 2020 when a worldwide pandemic afforded me the time to get back to it. Doing some online searching, I located a new program called WebTrees which is online based. All data was exported from FoxPro to ASCII files and imported into WebTrees. This was not a clean import - all the data came over, but every person had to be remarried to their spouse and all children had to be relinked to their families. This gave me an opportunity to refamiliarize myself with everyone! Now, with the export complete, all data can be exported to the standard GEDCOM format so we are (hopefully) future-proof and ready for new techological advances without having to transcribe data.
I have tried to be as accurate as possible with dates but, sometimes, mistakes can be made. Also, court records conflict at times with personal records and memories. I would prefer to believe the personal stories simply because I have seen mistakes in courthouse records. In these cases, I have added a comment line to explain the discrepancy. I hope you enjoy looking through the history as much as I have enjoyed putting it together.
This tree is far from finished. In fact, it will never be finished but I would like to have much more information than I do. You, family members, are my resource. I would appreciate any information that you can fill in. Please let me know about births, marriages, deaths, etc. for people who are or should be in the tree. If you find any inaccuracies, I would like to hear about them, too. I am eager to hear from you!
Thanks in advance,
John R Lucas
I guess everyone knows that "Lucas" is the Latin form of the name "Luke." My understanding is that the name became so widespread during the time when Latin was the common language of scholarship in the Western world. That would make it difficult for us to trace it to one country of origin.
I have heard an explaination which is Man from Lucania, a province of southern Italy.
The bits that I know (have heard) are that the Lucas name was one of the original celtic names (before Ireland etc.). Celtic tribes would roam from Egypt to Ireland and all in between. This explains the name showing up on Swiss Stamps, Spanish and mexican areas such as Cabo San Lucas, Roman architecture as "LVCVS" carved above doorway arches and so on. Only a name so old could spread into each of these cultures stemming from being in the same tribe.
I have heard some explanations of the name being "of the light" or similar which ties into some of the talk of religion being tied to the name that I have heard.
The English surname Lucas is patronymic in origin, being one of those names derived from the first name of a father or ancestor. In this case, the name simply denotes "the son of Lucas", Lucas being the learned, and indeed, earliest form of the personal name Luke, from Latin "Lucius", meaning "light". The name has strong Biblical associations as it is the name of a saint, the third Evangelist beloved by Paul. It was first introduced into England, where New Testament names were rarely used, at the time of the Norman invasions in the eleventh century. Only through the Norman-French influence did such names become popular in England, and serve as the etymon of numerous family names.
Today, the surnames Luke, Lukes, and Lucas are found in relatively large numbers in England. The form Lucas still survives in its original form, and seems to be concentrated mainly in the Midlands and the south-west. The earliest recorded instances of the name in England date from the middle of the twelfth century. In c. 1153, one Everard Lucas was one of the Knights Templar in Hertforshire, and one Willelmus Lucas is recorded in the Poll Tax of Howdenshire in 1379.
With emigration, the surname spread to North America where it was established at an early date. One of the first records is that contained in the ships lists. In July, 1735, having sworn the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy, one Richard Lucas, aged 16, set sail for Virginia in the "Alice".
Here's some interesting information on the name origin of the name Burkhardt that I found on the internet. The author and source of the first document is unknown beyond what is stated within the document.
Seligenstadt is a place of great language change through the centuries. When a family name of that town is studied, a number of words must come into consideration but usually a derivation can be localized. Burkard is a significant, easily traceable word and not as doubtful as some others.
In old Gothic, BURG is found as BOURGS. It is equivalent to the Latin CASTELLUM, an elevated fortification. Hard in German signified STRONG, hence the name BURGHARD equals a strong, elevated fortification. The newest study on the significance of names by Brechenmacker gives the modern name Burkard as coming direct in meaning from Burghard. It emerges first as a personal name of the Bishop of Aosta in 593 A.D., in 681 A.D., a Bishop of Wurzburg,
Burghard (742-753 A.D.) acted as a general in the armies of Charlemagne, a duke of Thuringen, duke of the Germans, an archbishop of Lyons.
In the church and civil records at Seligenstadt, the name is spelled BURKARD. Through the years, however, for reasons personal and other wise, the name appears in a variety of spellings both in Germany and in America. It is not uncommon to see persons from the same lineal descent differ in the spelling of their name. Among the more widely seen forms of spelling are Burkhard, Burkhardt, Burckhard, Burgard (this is to be noted among the Burkard whose families originated on the French border towards
Saxony), Burkitt, Burkett and Burket. The latter two spellings were used frequently in news items that appeared in Johnstown Pennsylvania papers during the eighties.
The writer is in possession of a letter written in 1936 by Joseph Burkard. In a sort of humorous way, it lets us know there has been disagreement over the spelling of the name in the past. While serving in the United States Navy at the turn of the century, he crossed the Atlantic twenty
times. On one of these trips, Joseph visited the ancestral town and looked up the family records. In his letter he says in part: "When I was in Seligenstadt, I found that our name was spelled Burkard. After our family came to America and learned to talk English someone added the T making the name read Burkardt.
Of late some of the Frauenschaft has inserted an H so now the spelling has changed to read BURKHARDT."
The name has many variant spellings, which include Buchard, Burghard, Burkhard, and Burkett.
It would be useless to labor the point on the spelling of any family name. Time, place, personal reasons, as well as those beyond one's control, all can very easily enter into a situation and bring about change. The same may readily happen to a name. For that reason, if for no other, I think it well to accept each spelling as it is given to us.