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The Barney History Project: The people, places, and stories of Barney, Georgia

Foster Profiles

Back to the Foster and Little River overview

These profiles collect the research behind Foster's short life as a postal and naval-stores village. Some people lived or worked at Foster. Others belong to its land history or to the wider McNeil & Rozier business network. The descriptions below keep those distinctions clear and state when an identity remains uncertain.

Founders, operators, and land history

  • Thomas Alligood Rozier: Foster postmaster, McNeil & Rozier partner, and the official who moved the post office to Barney in 1897
  • James Thomas McNeill: North Carolina-born naval-stores operator, the verified McNeil in the Foster partnership, and the most likely identity behind the newspaper's abbreviated or variant "J. T. Neill" horse seller
  • Angus James "A. J." Conoly: co-purchaser of half the Foster naval-stores concern in 1891 and later Brooks County sheriff
  • Hector McLean Conoly: Angus's brother, Foster operator, and later Alabama and Florida naval-stores businessman
  • Jacob Henry "Jack" Croft: Brooks and Colquitt County farmer who sold McNeil & Rozier about 325 acres in northern Land Lot 227; local residents required his family to leave after the 1887 schoolhouse fires
  • Hope Croft: child named in the 1887 Stonewall Academy reports; his identification with Jack Croft's son Abba/Abner is strong probable, while any connection to the 1885–1886 fires remains unproved

Foster visitors and neighborhood figures

  • Flora Katharine "Katy" Conoly Walker Sexton: verified sister of Angus and Hector who visited Foster in 1893; no permanent Foster residence or business role is proved
  • Theodore Byrd: Foster naval-stores worker whose identification with a Cumberland County, North Carolina, man remains possible rather than proved
  • Archie McBryde: temporary Foster visitor whose possible Little River Academy identity remains unproved; no naval-stores job is established
  • Joe Rogers: head of a family living near Foster in 1894, probably Joseph J. Rogers but without a conclusive identity bridge

Land Lot 227 and the Joyce tract

  • James J. "Jackson" Joyce: early landholder, Methodist minister, court official, and enslaver; the James-to-Jackson identification is strong probable
  • Elizabeth Wells Joyce: widow connected by derivative evidence to a southern Lot 227 tract; the original title instrument remains missing

The shared Joyce land study explains the possible acreage, the missing title evidence, and why Joyce's Ferry belongs at the Miller Bridge crossing rather than at Foster or Folsom Bridge.

Folsom Bridge and the surrounding neighborhood

  • David Hiers: Brooks County farmer, public official, and contractor for the separate lagoon bridge near Folsom Bridge in 1876; also the grandfather of Barney resident Dove Rogers Moody

Earlier McNeil & Rozier business context

  • T. P. Jordan: unresolved owner of 62 barrels of rosin levied at Argyle in 1888 under an execution held by McNeil & Rozier
  • Thomas S. Passmore: strong-probable identification of the defendant who prevailed in a 1904 timber-rights case against J. T. McNeill & Company
  • Henry B. Culbreth: strong-probable identification of McNeill's cousin and employee who died at his Hahira residence in 1894

Passmore and Culbreth were researched in one shared Hahira business-network dossier. Neither man is proved to have lived or worked at Foster.