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sources of information regarding those whom many have assumed were the first
FOYs in America.

Much of the published information regarding early FOYs in the New World has
as its genesis a document titled FOY, SMITH, BOYDSTUN, & CRENSHAW,
which was published in 1936 by the research department of The American
Historical Society, Inc. in New York City. {For convenience I will hereafter refer
to that document as the AHS document.}

As one compares the work done by FOY family researchers over the last fifty or
sixty years regarding those early FOYs who lived in the Maryland-North
Carolina regions he sees certain passages of information being repeated over
and over again and he says to himself, “I’ve seen that information somewhere
before. Where did it come from?”’ If he continues his search, he will eventually
run across the AHS document.

BYRON C. FOY; A CHRYSLER COMPANY EXECUTIVE & THE AHS

DOCUMENT

In the 1930's an unusual man named BYRON C. FOY, born in Texas, contracted
with the American Historical Society (AHS) to conduct research regarding his
family. As mentioned earlier, in 1936 the AHS published a document which
contained, in part, the results of their FOY research.

The results regarding early FOYs which were published in the AHS document
have been relied upon, copied and recopied, either directly or indirectly, by
virtually every FOY researcher whose work I have reviewed. This includes the
work done by MARY B. JACOBS, who has produced one of the most complete
and authoritative documents regarding the North Carolina FOYs in existence.

As later FOY researchers copied and recopied information from the AHS
document they left out some very important and telling modifying words which
were used by the society in their original report. Qualifying words used in the
AHS document such as probably, possibly, quite possible, seems possible,
according to tradition, and doubtless are NOT to be found in most later
researcher’ s works. Rather, the qualified information copied from the AHS

TAB 1 Pg. 2