Anthony Francis Lucas (born Antun Lučić; September 9, 1855 – September 2, 1921) was a Croatian-born American oil explorer. With Pattillo Higgins, he organized the drilling of an oil well near Beaumont, Texas, that became known as Spindletop. This led to the widespread exploitation of oil and the start of the Petroleum Age.
Early life
Christened Antonio Francesco Luchich, he was the son of Captain Francis Stephen Luchich, a prosperous shipbuilder and shipowner from the Croatian island of Lesina, and his wife Giovanna Giovanizio. According to Lucas himself, who was proud of his heritage, the Luchich family was pure by blood, descended from ancient Illyrian (Dalmatian) nobility, Born in the Austrian Empire city of Split, his family moved to Trieste, where his father served in the Austro-Hungarian navy.
At the age of 20, Lucas completed studies at the Polytechnical Institute (Technische Hochschule) in Graz, and became an engineer. After graduating from the Imperial and Royal Naval Academy of Pola and Fiume, Lucas was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1878. He married Caroline Weed Fitzgerald in 1887. They moved to Washington, D.C. in 1888, where Lucas worked as a mechanical and mining engineer, except for a two-year break prospecting for gold in Colorado. Their son Anthony FitzGerald was born on 21 July 1889. for development in the area of oil exploration. A museum with a granite obelisk was built to honor the explorer about which is inscribed: "On this spot on the tenth day of the twentieth century a new era in civilization began." A street and an elementary school in Beaumont, Texas, bear his name.