Frank Truscott

I am a 6th great grandson of Thomas Jefferson and Martha Wayles through their grandson, Colonel Thomas Jefferson Randolph of Edgehill. I was named for my great-uncle, Francis Meriwether Randolph—a name that made life on the playground difficult when I was a kid. My sons are Christopher Harloe and Lucas Randolph. As children, I'm pretty sure their names wereeasier to live with than mine.

My sisters Susan, Mary and Ginny, and my brother Lucian and I were army brats, as were my parents, and we grew up all over the world. It was an interesting childhood, sometimes challenging and always changing. I've lost count of the number of schools I attended or houses I lived in, although my father had the number of moves we made chiseled on his headstone. In fact, the one constant my siblings and I had during those years was family and the set of values we were given.

I have wonderful memories of Wild Acres, in Charlottesville, where my great-grandmother,Mary Walker Randolph, lived in her old age. In the grand Randolph tradition of cousin marrying cousins, my great-grandmother married her cousin, William Mann Randolph. Both were great-etc.- grandchildren of Mr. Jefferson. In referring to the cousin-marriage of her parents, I recall my grandmother, Sarah Nicholas Randolph Truscott, saying "whole generations pass before Randolph
women ever need to change their monograms." My grandmother was a real presence in my life, as were her sisters, Agnes Dillon Randolph Hill and Mary Walker Randolph (the younger), whom we all called, with great affection, Miss Moo. When we were stateside my parents often sent my brother and me to spend long summer weeks with these ladies, and later, when I was in college and the Army, they provided me a weekend haven. They were smart, funny and brave, and helped to form the
foundations on which my siblings and I built our lives.

The foundations they gave us were the same ones given them. These are the morals, ethics and values that were handed down, parent to child, from Mr. Jefferson to his children to their children and beyond. My brother has an expression for this. "From their lips to our ears," he says, and he is right. We have a broader view of history than our grandparents had and we have discovered a larger family. But the foundations are the same and in this way one generation lives on through the next. What we learn at this Gathering and the experiences we share will be passed on to our children and their children. It will become part of our shared heritage and will incorporate itself into the foundations of the next generation.

Webmasters Note:- Frank passed away on September 8, 2008.