Nathaniel Lucas.

Nathaniel Lucas, a carpenter and joiner, the son of William John Lucas of Kingston, Surrey, was tried at the Old Bailey in 1784 for stealing, sentenced to seven years' transportation and arrived on the "Scarborough".

Sent to Norfolk Island in the first party of settlers, Lucas was praised by Lieutenant King as having been of great service in supervising convict labour on public buildings. In 1791 he was living on a grant at Norfolk Island, and later supplied the government with pork and maize. In 1793, he was made a constable, and in July 1795, was appointed master carpenter on fifty pound a year.

A literate man, he corresponded with his father in England and in 1795, his reports of the fertile island were glowing, and he gave thanks to his own industry and God that his wife, Olivia Gaskins or Gascoigne, and four children were in good health and comfortably situated. He recounted the unspeakable misfortune' of the death of their twin daughters when a pine tree fell on his house during a freak storm.

After King's departure, Lieutenant-Governor Forveaux suspended Lucas as master carpenter for impertinence in September 1800. He was re-employed in 1802, and in 1804, King, then Governor, granted him a lease in the Domain at Sydney. Allowed to visit Sydney on business in October, he arranged to return there on the reduction of the settlement at Norfolk Island, and promised to bring with him the materials for the construction of a government windmill and one for himself.

Lucas arrived in Sydney March 1805, with his wife and nine children. He was granted several town lots in Sydney, and in 1809, 500 acres at Minto. He worked as superintendent of carpenters and supervised the building of government windmills, tollhouses, watch-houses, and additions to the hospital. He later diversified his business by setting up a milling business at Liverpool. He contracted for the construction of the Greenway-designed St Luke's Church at Liverpool, but took his own life, with only the foundations of the church completed, in 1818. His family of eleven children was still carrying on his business in 1828