The  Foy  Family 

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 Foy family tree

Mary Foy (b Garryedmond 1879 - d Manhattan NYC18 June 1956) married Michael Mullin( b-??; d - Bronx NY 4 January 1927). They had three children: Josephine White, Margaret ("Peg") Kabriski and Mary Frances Gillen

Ellie Foy (b Garryedmond circa 1882 - d Garryedmond 17 October 1969) married William Costello (b-??; d Garryedmond 8 November 1954). They had no children. The Costellos lived in a simple farmhouse on the main Garryedmond road. Ellie visited NewYork City several times during the 1930s.  In the early 1960s, Ellie gave land across the street to her nephew John Foy to build a house for John and his wife Margaret Cunnane, on condition that John and Margaret care for her and her property.  At her death the land went to John and is now part of the enlarged Foy farm.

Delia Foy (b Garryedmond c 1890 - d Elizabeth NJ 23 June 1965) arrived at Ellis Island on the Carmania 19 May 1909 from Queenstown.  She married Michael T Martin (b Dunmore, Co Galway 10 Dec 1885 - d Elizabeth NJ 12 February 1956) in Elizabeth, New Jersey on 29 June 1914, with a Patrick and Bridget Morley as witnesses.  Delia and Mike lived in Elizabeth the rest of their lives.. They had three children: Catherine Penn, Beatrice Hartman, and Mary Kelly..

John Foy (b Garryedmond circa 1884 - d Garryedmond 11 May 1965) married Delia Costello (b-???, d Garryedmond 28 Oct 1967) and took over the family farm. Their children were Patrick ("Paddy"), John, Mary ("Mai") Gormley and Margaret ("Peggy") Comer.

Margaret Foy (b Garryedmond 1886 - d Claremorris 9 May 1983) came to the USA, worked for many years as a nurse in New Jersey, last living in Montclair NJ. While living there she was watched over by Bob and Marian O'Grady who lived in Roseland NJ and Eileen and Eddie Zysk of Livingston NJ. When unable to live independently, she moved to an apartment in the Kabriski house in Flushing NY, then to a nearby apartment better suited to her needs. She then returned to Ireland to the John XXIII nursing home near Claremorris. She is buried in the new cemetery in Claremorris.  Margaret is listed in the Ellis Island books as arriving in the USA on 9 October 1914 on the Celtic..  On this trip she accompanied little Josephine Mullin, who is not listed -- the lists often omitted children.  Earlier on 21 Sept 1906 Margaret had come to the USA earlier on the liner Baltic, the same liner as Jane Foy, but Margaret traveled second class, so was not listed in the Ellis Island record books on that trip.

Jane Foy (b Garryedmond 2 June 1888 - d Yorktown Heights NY 23 May 1981) arrived in the USA on the liner Baltic 21 September 1906 and moved to Mt Kisco where she worked for the Parker family.  She met and married Thomas O'Grady (b Ballyhadreen, Co Mayo 6 Aug 1891 - d Yorktown Heights NY 10 February 1969) and had four children: Francis, Robert, Thomas and Jane Flood. See O'Grady section for description of their descendants.

Patrick James Foy (b Garryedmond 15 Apr 1890 - d Queens NY 23 June 1981) married Susan Olwell (b Ballinagh,Co Cavan ??? - d Queens NY 17 March 1932) and lived in Queens, New York.  Patrick most likely came to New York from Queenstown on on the liner Carmania, arriving 27 April 1913, but there is another Patrick Foy from Claremorris noted as arriving 1 May 1911 on the Baltic.  Susan arrived earlier on the Majestic on 10 May 1907.  With the help of   Paddy Murray, a cousin, Patrick obtained work on the elevated/subway train system in New York City, served in the US Navy for a time during World War I, and then became a New York City Policeman. After his retirement from the police force, he worked as a security "runner" for stockbrokers on Wall Street. Patrick and Susan had five children: Patrick, Joseph, Peter Aloysius, Kathleen, Eileen Zysk and Monica.

Cecelia Foy (b Garryedmond 16 March1892 - La Jolla CA 7 August 1960) {pictured in center, with Elizabeth at left and Hannah at right}  became a nurse, served with the US Army in France during World War I. She did not marry. She was instrumental in bringing (smuggling??) Luke Foy into the US despite his having tuberculosis, and with Jane Foy O'Grady cared for him until he died in 1920. When Peter Joseph Foy suffered a heart attack in 1929, she brought him to Florida for an extended rest. When Peter Joseph Foy Jr suffered a sledding accident in 1938, she took him from Fordham Hospital into her own apartment in Bronxville NY. When Mary McKeon Foy was in Calvary Hospital NY (a hospice for terminal cancer patients) she reappeared, took Mary home and cared for her until her death in August 1941. Again she cared for Peter Joseph Foy in Jane O'Grady's home as he died from cancer in 1951. When Peter Joseph Foy Jr needed treatment for a kidney removal in 1952, she cared for him and drove with him across country to California. She lived in Santa Barbara and La Jolla California. She died leaving Sunday Mass in Newport Beach CA while on her way to Sharon Marie Foy's baptism. 

Hannah Foy (b Garryedmond 14 June 1894 - d- Franklin MA 7  Jan 1925 ) married Charles Andersen (b ??? - d 9 Nov 1952) and lived in Franklin MA, USA.  She died before they had any children.  Hannah was a nurse, and with Cecelia Foy joined the US Army and served during World War I in France.

Peter Joseph Foy (b Garryedmond 12 October 1895 - d Bronx NY 13 June 1951) was a twin, whose brother died at childbirth.   Peter married Virginia McKeon (b 12 may 1900 - d 6 August 1941). They lived in Bronx, New York and had two children Peter Joseph and Richard Daniel. When in Ireland, Peter was an outstanding jockey, riding for his uncle Peter at county fairs. It is said that the family decided to send him to America to remove him from what it considered an unsavory culture. Peter left Queenstown and arrived in New York on on the liner Baltic 2 May 1914, where he stayed with Mary Mullin family until he could be independent. During World War I he served as a caisson driver in the 77th division; his separation papers note that his horsemanship was excellent. After the war, he drove a taxicab in New York City for a while, but then joined Andrew Davey, a chain of grocery stores, where he soon became the manager of the entire chain. He suffered a heart attack in 1929. Andrew Davey went bankrupt shortly after the stock market crash. Peter then organized a group of independent stores, "Royal Food Stores", with himself as general manager and chief buyer. Relatives (e.g. the Morleys) and Irish friends operated the individual stores. By 1937 the operation was failing. Peter arranged for any store operator to purchase his own store and closed the general operation. Two survivors of this are Morley's Supermarket on Yonkers Avenue owned by Jack Morley and Morley's Market on Lake Street, Yonkers, owned by Michael Morley. Peter then joined the expanding Shopwell/Tradewell supermarket chain, where he was used to open new stores and train managers, then move on to another new store. He contracted cancer in the late 1940s and died in June 1951. He is buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Valhalla NY.

Elizabeth Foy (b Garryedmond 6 Mar 1898 - d Franklin MA 1937) also married Charles Andersen.  Lizzie arrived in the USA on 29 Oct 1916, giving Mrs. Mary Mullin of Manhattan as her US contact, and listing John Foy as her Claremorris contact.  The Andersons had three children:   Patricia Anderson Stokely, Charles and Robert.  Patricia had five children: Margaret, Peter, Anne, Joseph and David.

Luke Foy (bap Garryedmond 13 May 1900 - d Valhalla NY 20 September 1920) did not marry. He developed tuberculosis, was smuggled into the USA after World War I accompanied by Cecelia Foy on 25 December 1919 on the Mauretania from Southhampton.  Hannah and Cecelia were nurses who served in the US Army during World War I. Jane Foy O'Grady and the  nurses cared for Luke in Jane's home in Valhalla NY until his death. Upon his death, the women combined to buy a family plot in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Hawthorne, New York, with the understanding that any unmarried member of the Foys would have the right to be buried there. By an odd quirk, the plot is in the name of Peter Joseph Foy, since he drove to the cemetery with the undertaker to purchase the plot.

Cecelia, Elizabeth(?) and Hannah were nurses (RNs), while Delia, Margaret and Jane were practical nurses (LPNs). This followed a typical pattern for Irish immigrants. Women studied to be nurses or teachers; men joined the police or fire departments.  Cecelia and Hannah trained in New York City, probably at Bellevue and joined the US Army, from which they received automatic USA citizenship.   

The Bronx Foys

We celebrated Peter Joseph Foy's birthday 10 October 1895, but his birth certificate indicates he was born at Garryedmond  2 November 1895. When Ireland was under British rule, births had to be reported within a certain number of days. Peter was born at home, and the custom was for the father to report the birth when he traveled to the local fair. To avoid a heavy fine, the birth always 'occurred' within two or three days of the fair date.

Peter became an expert horseman, and as a teenager became a jockey for his Uncle Peter Foy, who raced horses at the local fairs in Mayo, Galway and Sligo. His brothers and sisters believed this to be a bad influence (his father and mother were dead before Peter was 10 years old). Couple this worry with the poor prospects in rural Ireland, so Peter was sent to America to be placed in the care of brothers and sisters who emigrated earlier. He settled in Yorkville, on the upper East Side, with Mary Mullin, and clerked in a German delicatessen, where his blond hair, 6'2" spare frame, and growing facility for the German language led many to believe he was German

Peter joined the US Army in 1917, and was assigned to the 301st battalion in the 77th division, which trained at Camp Upton. His group were to be caisson drivers, bring ammunition in horse-drawn carriages up to the fighting front. To his surprise, he was the most qualified horseman in the group. When he arrived in Nantes his team, was given a group of young, untrained horses. He trained them to draw the wagons, then brought them to the north of France where they remained in combat until the end of the war in November 1918. Peter rose to the rank of Sergeant, worked under Lt. Col. James Roosevelt, and his discharge papers note that his horsemanship was excellent. Enroute home from France, he handwrote a diary of his experience

Upon returning to the States, he worked for a short time as a taxi driver in New York City, but soon joined Andrew Davey, a chain of grocery stores. By 1927 he rose to be general manager of the entire chain. Unfortunately, the chain failed at the beginning of the depression in 1929. About this time, Peter suffered a heart attack, and spent the winter of 1929-1930 in Florida under the care of his sister, Cecilia, who was a nurse.

He then organized Royal Food Stores Inc, a chain of a dozen small grocery stores. These were operated by Irish relatives and friends, including Jack and Mike Morley. The stores operated at subsistence level until 1939, when Royal Food was disbanded. Those who wished to continue bought their individual stores. Mike Morley bought his store on Lake Avenue, which he later passed on to his nephew, Michael Morley. Jack Morley grew his store on Yonkers Avenue, near the raceway, and passed this on to his nephews (and niece) the Concannons.

Peter then joined George Loft, the candy manufacturer, who had opened a supermarket in New Rochelle, where Peter became the manager. He transferred to Shopwell, where he ran the store in Greenwich, Connecticut until 1946. Shopwell then used him to open new stores in the Westchester area and train the managers. He did this until his death in 1951, from cancer. For the last months of his life, Peter lived with the O'Grady's, cared for by Jane O'Grady and Cecilia Foy, who came back from California to nurse him.

Virginia McKeon was born into a Irish family in Newtown, Queens. Her father and mother were born in the USA, but her grandparents were all born overseas. Her father was a fire captain, her mother a housekeeper who raised ten children. Virginia was baptized Virginia Maria del Rosario, because her mother loved nice sounding names. When Virginia was a baby, somebody looked into her crib and said she looked like a blossom, and "Blossom" became her name after that. 

Blossom attended Newtown High School and took piano lessons. After graduation she worked for Landers, Frary and Clark, a manufacturer of electric appliances. When she married, the company gave her an iron as a gift, and terminated her services ... a common custom at that time.  
The couple were married in St. Bartholomew's Church in Elmhurst. Patrick Foy was the best man, and Blossom's cousins, Helen Casey and Abigail Sherry were bridesmaids. The couple moved into a house at 684 E 237 Street in the Bronx, which Peter had built earlier and provided on a temporary basis for the Mullin family 

Blossom bore Peter two sons, Peter Joseph Foy Jr.  and Richard Daniel Foy. Shortly after giving birth to Richard in November 1929, Blossom was diagnosed with cancer, and underwent a radical mastectomy in 1933. She suffered all during the 1930s with cancer, and finally succumbed on 6 August 1941.  Again, Cecelia Foy took charge of Blossom's last days, caring for her at home instead of allowing Blossom to remain  in a hospital. Blossom was loved and remembered by all who knew her for her gentle disposition.

Peter Joseph Foy Jr (b Bronx NY 9 Feb 1927  -  )was in a sled/auto collision when he was eleven years old, and spent several months in Fordham Hospital. His Aunt Cecelia Foy told the hospital she was transferring him to Lawrence Hospital near her in Bronxville, but brought him to her apartment instead, where she nursed him back to health. In 1941 he won a scholarship to Regis High School, a Jesuit institution. In 1942 he and Richard went to Marist Preparatory, in Esopus, New York; Peter's last high school year was 1944-1945, spend at Greenwich High School. Immediately after graduation Peter was drafted into the US Marine Corps in July 1945; he missed the fighting, but he did spend a year on patrol duty near Tientsin, China. When he mustered out, he worked for about ten months for a Pittsburgh glass as a deliveryman, then started at MIT in September 1947. Standing 6'6", he was a natural candidate for collegiate crew, but by the end of crew seasons, he was disabled with back problems. Finally in his third summer at MIT, it was diagnosed not as a muscle sprain but a non-functioning kidney which had been dormant since his teenage accident.

Leaving MIT after the death of his father, Peter underwent a kidney removal under the watchful eye of Aunt Cecelia. After a short recuperation period, Cecelia and Peter drove cross country to California, stopping en route in Kansas to visit with Berry and Foy relatives. Cecelia went to Santa Barbara and resumed her nursing activity. Peter hooked into the computing craze, first with North American Aviation, then for almost two decades with Hughes Aircraft, then Caterpillar Tractor for a year, then finished his career as a trouble shooting specialist for NCR. 

Peter met and married Eileen Howitt (b Winnipeg Ontario 4 Aug 1918  -  Agoura Hills CA 28 Dec 2006) a Canadian family originally from Ireland and England, many of whom had migrated to the West Coast. They have one child, Sharon Marie Foy, who graduated from UC at San Diego and  married John Swanke. This union resulted in three children: Michael, Erin, and Megan.  The family relocated from Santee CA to Bloomington IL in 2003.  John was called to service in the Iraq action in 2003 and was recalled to such service in 2006.

Richard Daniel Foy (b Bronx NY 17 Nov 1929  -  ) started high school at Marist Preparatory in Esopus New York. with a view to become a Marist Brother, a group of teaching brothers. He attended Marist (then called Marian) College 1947-1950, and began his teaching career at age 20 at St. Ann's Academy, Manhattan, New York. While there, he took graduate courses in mathematics at St. John's University (M.S.) and the Courant Institute of NYU (PhD). When St Ann's relocated to Queens as Archbishop Molloy High School in summer 1957, Richard transferred to Cardinal Hayes High School.

In November 1958, he was named President of Marian College, a position he held until 1979. He directed the growth of the institution from 120 students to 2000 students, handled the construction of an entirely new campus, the hiring of the faculty, and converting the college from an all male institution to co-education in 1968. He left the Brothers in early 1970, but remained President with the consent of the Brothers and approval of a board now dominated by laymen and laywomen.

In 1978, Richard informed the Board of Trustees that he would leave the college in 1979, giving them time to search carefully for a successor (Dennis Murray, who remains President to this writing in 2009). Richard joined Boyden World Corporation, an executive search group (nicknamed 'headhunters') with offices in 40 countries. His background with the Brothers, an international order, and familiarity with several languages, helped him fit in well with non-US principals, so that within six months he became the Chief Operating Officer. He remained there until he retired at the end of 1999.  

Since retiring from Boyden, Richard acts as a consultant in computing,  teaching at Marist (2000-2001) in the Computer Science Division.  He also consults in the Marist E-commerce Division to assist small businesses to employ computing efficiently.   He and another retired colleague, Brian Desilets, embarked on a long term volunteer project to show the impact of the Marist Brothers on the development of Marist College  (http://library.marist.edu/archives/heritage.html).  To date they have collected, catalogued and posted over 2000 pictures taken during the 1945-1970 period,  done audio interviews with close to 180 individuals, and video interviews with the half dozen most significant persons.   Richard  has also developed a history of the Brothers' property in Esopus (www.academic2.marist.edu/foy/esopus).  And of course, he has undertaken the task of collecting and collating information about the Foy and McKeon families... his mot recent project is to find out who owned the properties occupied by Marist College, tracking the owners back to the original patent of 1695.

Richard married Mary Ellen Morley (Lackawanna NY 8 July 1938 - d Poughkeepsie NY 19 Dec 2006) in December 1970. Mary was the adopted daughter of Thomas Joseph Morley. She graduated from Our Lady of Wisdom Academy in Queens, then took course work at St. John's University which prepared her to work with children with special needs. Later she transferred to nursing, taking a bachelor's degree at Catholic University in Washington DC in 1969, and working at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. After her marriage, she taught nursing at Mount St Mary College in Newburgh, NY and Ulster Community College in Kingston NY until the birth of her children, after which she became a full time housewife and mother.

Peter Joseph Luke Foy III was born January 9, 1974. He attended grammar school in Chappaqua NY, John F Kennedy, the Catholic high school in Golden Bridge, NY, and Marist College in Poughkeepsie NY, where he earned an academic scholarship. He started in computer science, but switched to political science. After graduation in 1995, he attended Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark NJ, with a concentration in criminal law. He clerked for a year with a criminal court judge in Paterson NJ, and then took a position as Assistant Prosecutor in the city of Newark NJ.  In 2003 he was recruited to the District Attorney's office in Morristown, where he still practices..  He married Tracy Jefferson Gibbons early summer 2008 and they and they had a daughter Zoë Morley Foy on 3 Feb 2009.

Bridget Morley Mary Foy (b 27 Sept 1976 -  ) attended elementary and secondary schools in Chappaqua NY. While at Horace Greeley High School, she participated in basketball and softball each of the four years. In her last year, she was the strikeout queen of Westchester.

Moving on to Marist College, on an academic scholarship, she majored in biology. She joined the Division I softball team as a 'walk-on', and pitched for two years, reaching the NCAA tournament in the second year. Realizing that the softball activity was interfering with her academic progress, she left the team to concentrate on studies for pre-med.

Upon graduation in 1998, Bridget taught kindergarten at Sacred Heart School in the South Bronx as a Marist Lay Volunteer. The next year she began medical school studies at New York College of Osteopathic Medicine, Old Westbury, NY, graduating in May 2003.  She married Jason Scott Pomerantz (b Kerhonkson NY 8 Dec 1975  -  )  She completed her residency  in family practice at Kingston Hospital NY June 30 2006, and  entered private practice at East Fishkill NY in August 2006.  In 2008 she accepted a position of supervisor of residents at Kingston Hospital (with NYCOM  faculty status) and also treats patients at a facility in New Paltz NY.    Jason is the financial officer of an oil distribution company in Kingston NY.  The Pomerantz family (including a daughter Mary Josephine born 8 June 2008) lives in Poughkeepsie NY.