Grandpapa

Frank Kernochan Scott, my paternal grandfather, was born February 13, 1888 in Washington, DC and died July 12, 1979, in Montgomery, Alabama, a city founded by settlers led by his Great-grandfather, John Scott. Grandpapa, as I knew him, was born into a wealthy, connected family and was raised as a spoiled aristocrat. He spoke with what sounded to me like a British accent, particularly noticable on the words he pronounced as 'tomahto' and 'potahto.' This must have been the way upper class Washingtonians spoke at the end of the 19th Century.

Grandpapa's father was the first William Owen Nixon Scott, youngest child of the first Alfred Vernon Scott. By the inscrutable workings of Fate, Willie Scott inherited the antebellum fortune of his grandfather who, anticipating the South's disastrous Civil War adventure, had liquidated his material wealth and moved it to Washington DC, then died on May 26, 1860, one year prior to the outbreak of hostilities. The money stayed in a Northern bank during the war to be clained by Willie's mother. Rebecca Nixon Scott, as the war ended.

Grandpapa loved to tell this story. I listened to it, along with other key narratives, at an early age on a visit to Montgomery and it became a foundational element of my identity as the only male descendant of William Owen Nixon Scitt of my generation carrying the Scott name forward, just as it was for Grandpapa.