Both Edward Lucas II and his brother William owned teenaged slaves in the 1787 Virginia tax census decades before this man's birth.

The most famous was Daniel Bedinger Lucas, who became a lawyer, Confederate officer, and ultimately a member of the West Virginia Supreme Court.

[10] His elder brother, Edward Lucas, who had also studied to become a lawyer but never actually practiced law, instead became a politician, and in 1837 superintendent then paymaster at the U.S. military arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

Voters had elected Edward to Congress as a Jacksonian Democrat in 1832 and re-elected him in 1834, when he narrowly defeated John R. Cooke of the newly organized Whig Party.

[11][12] He served a single term before winning election as a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives in 1838, the seat his brother had previously held.

[13] Lucas also narrowly escaped death on February 28, 1844, when he was among the prominent politicians on the 'Princeton' when a gun exploded, killing two members of President Tyler's cabinet, among many other casualties.

Lucas survived his wife by many years, as well as the American Civil War, which caused the establishment of the new state of West Virginia.