Nathan Lucas

Maternal grandfather of Charles Kingsley, whose mother was Mary Lucas (b. 1787). Thomas Louis (q.v.) was awarded the compensation for the Mount Clapham estate in Barbados as administrator of the estate of Nathan Lucas. Nathan Lucas owned The Content plantation in Demerara from at least 1803 when he visited the property, returning to the estate again in 1806-7.

Nathan Lucas of Manchester Square was listed as a fellow of the Linnaean Society in 1804.

Brandow's Genealogies of Barbados Families pp. 402-403 has a brief entry on the Lucas family, including Nathan Lucas, from which the life-dates are drawn. The ODNB has entries both for Charles Kingsley (Norman Vance, ‘Kingsley, Charles (1819–1875)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15617, accessed 28 Dec 2014]) and for his father Charles Kingsley (Roger Steer, ‘Kingsley, Charles (1781–1860)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/59874, accessed 28 Dec 2014]).

The first of these says of Charles Kingsley the writer 'His mother, Mary Lucas (1787–1873), was born in Barbados, the daughter of a judge who had inherited slave-run sugar plantations. But any prospect of substantial wealth from this source eventually passing to the Kingsley family vanished with the decline of the West Indian sugar trade and the abolition of slavery in 1833.'

The latter says of Charles Kingsley senior 'He then retired to Battramsley House near Lymington in the New Forest, where he devoted himself to the pursuits of a country gentleman before discovering, at the age of twenty-six, that all his money had gone', whereupon he married Mary '(1787–1873), the daughter of Nathan Lucas of Barbados and Rushford Lodge, Norfolk. Mary's organizing ability was a great asset to Kingsley after his funds ran out; when, almost certainly following her advice, he eventually made his career in the church it was Mary who did most of the parish visiting.'

Email from Dr P. A. K. Covey-Crump, 15/11/2017, sourced to the detailed journal Lucas kept of his visit to Demerara in 1803. Dr Covey-Crump adds, "He had only recently acquired the estate as maps held by the Dutch National Archives list the owner of The Content as J Kendall in 1798 and as Ashburner in 1799." Transcripts of the journal are held at the Library of the Linnaean Society and the Natural History Museum in London.

List of the Linnaean Society of London (London, 1804) p. 5; Transactions of the Linnaean Society (London, 1808), vol. 9 p. 5. We are grateful to Dr Covey-Crump for his assistance with compiling this entry.