Author: TRUSCOTT, Francis
Biography:
TRUSCOTT, Francis (1766-1833: ancestry.co.uk)
Francis Truscott was born at Creed, Cornwall, on 24 June 1766 and baptised on 27 July. His parents were Thomas Truscott and his wife Elizabeth Minors; they had married at Creed on 31 Dec. 1763. Truscott’s account of his life stresses his early love of reading and learning. He was introduced to Methodism by a friend and, after several weeks of thinking on the matter and reading Philip Doddridge’s (q.v.) Rise and Progress of Religion, he underwent a dramatic conversion experience on 20 June 1783. He began attending the Methodists’ meetings and in 1787 he became a preacher and travelled to Wales where he was appointed to the Pembroke circuit. In 1792 he returned to England and moved to Plymouth Dock (Devonport). Truscott married Martha Melhuish on 8 Oct. 1795 in Mevagissey, Cornwall; they had two sons, Thomas Melhuish (1799) and Robert Brackenbury Truscott (1801). Truscott was a frequent speaker at Methodist meetings and he served as an itinerant preacher on several circuits in the west of England and in Wales. He suffered from a “nervous affection” accompanied by depression and preferred to work in small rural circuits. His wife died on 4 May 1831 at St. Mawes, Cornwall, after a period of illness and Truscott’s own health declined rapidly from that date. He died at Plymouth on 17 Feb. 1833. Truscott’s poetry was collected by his friend Richard Treffrey and issued posthumously with his essays and sermons. His other works include numerous biographical essays published in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine. (ancestry.co.uk 12 Feb. 2025; Richard Treffrey, ed. Select Remains of Francis Truscott [1833]) SR