Jacob F. Lucas fathered 26 children with at least 3 wives

Big families of ten or more kids weren’t uncommon in the area in the mid-1900s and earlier. But one unusually prolific resident of Berkeley County, Jacob F. Lucas, fathered 26 children.

Jacob worked as a day laborer and otherwise seemed to be an ordinary man, but the size of his brood was so noteworthy that, when he died in Hedgesville in 1906, the Baltimore Sun newspaper ran a notice.

Jacob was married at least three times.

It appears he was 18 when he wed the first time, in 1845, to Ellen Butt. She may have been as young as 15 at the time. Fifteen years later, they were still married, living in Jones Springs, and the parents of five children.

By 1869, Ellen was gone, probably dead. Jacob married Mary Ann Smeltzer that year. He was 42 and she was about 30. At least five daughters were born of this union, including Sarah Virginia "Jennie,” who married George Kief. (Jennie and George were the great-grandparents of not only Kiefs, but Barthlows and Sifords.)

In 1880, in between marriages and having lost his latest wife, Jacob was in his late 50s, working as a laborer, and living in the Gerrardstown district. That year, six of his daughters were living with him. The girls ranged in age from toddler to 23.

A couple of years after that, at age 55, he married 23-year-old Effie Jane "Eva" Plotner. Records show at least another seven children from this marriage. He was 69 in 1896 when he fathered Ward Lemon Lucas, who may have been his last child.

An interesting coincidence is that this son, Ward Lemon Lucas, grew up to employ a household servant (Bertha Franklin Besaw) whom he eventually marrying, AND another of Jacob and Eva’s children, daughter Lora Mabel, ended up as a household servant who married her employer (George Thomas Richards), too.

As of his early 70s, Jacob was still working, still as a day laborer. He died in 1906 at age 79.

His wife Eva was only in her 40s when he died. She lived another 26 years and never remarried. In 1930, she was living in Hedgesville with her daughter Lora Mabel and Lora’s third husband Charles Norrington. Eva died in Hedgesville in 1932 at age 73.