Page 24 - Foy

WHERE DOES A FAMILY TREE BEGIN ?

One of the most difficult challenges for a family researcher is to know where to begin
his family tree for there seems to be no beginning and certainly no ending for the ever
changing picture of any family. As new information about a family is constantly being
discovered the picture changes so that it is impossible to ever call the family

researcher’s work completed.

When I first began doing research regarding the FOYs I thought it was a simple task.
All I wanted to do was trace the ancestry of one small group of FOYs, a group I refer
to as the Cisco Clan. And, in a very short time after I began my research, I found
ELOUISE BEARD SMITH’s research results in the Salt Lake City Genealogical
Library. Her work seemed to almost fulfill my goal.

I did a little more work to round out ELOUISE’s work and put together Volume One
of FOYS WHO CAME TO TEXAS thinking it would be a simple task to collect
additional information about currently living FOYs from the Cisco Clan, put together
some more photographs, add a couple of stories about some famous FOYs in our line

from long ago, write volume two and call the project finished. I was wrong; regrettably,
very wrong and very naive regarding the world of genealogical research. I quickly
realized volume one should never have been published. It was totally incomplete.

Soon after putting together volume one and beginning volume two, I ran across
NANCY FOY ARCHER on the Internet. NANCY lives in the Dallas, Texas area and
is descended from a long line of FOYs who came to Texas at about the same time the
Cisco Clan’s ancestors did. Both her line of FOYs and the Cisco Clan line of FOYs are
related.

NANCY and her father had done exhaustive research work on the FOYs and through
them I was introduced to a host of other FOY researchers all over the United States
who had compiled more data regarding the FOYs I had ever dreamed existed. Through
NANCY and her contacts I discovered hundreds of FOYs had come to Texas and had
established homesteads all over the state. And, they were all related. But, I am giving
away some secrets you will discover later as you read this work.

As the group of FOY researchers NANCY had discovered began to correspond and
exchange information, a talented computer expert, THOR FOY CARDEN of Madison,
TN put together a FOY website on the Internet. Dozens of FOY researchers began to
funnel data to this website and people from all over the world doing research on related
family names began to make inquiries about the FOYs and to share information they

Preface 13