Samuel Fordyce was born here in 1735, he emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1775 and established the Fordyce family. His grandson Samuel Wesley Fordyce (1840 -1919) became a leading financier and industrialist in the United States and a major player in the development of the American railroad. It is estimated he was involved in building and financing over twenty-four thousand miles of track including the Kansas City Southern Railway, the Little Rock Railway, Hot Springs & Western Railroad, St. Louis Valley Railroad, St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad, Missouri, Oklahoma & Gulf Railroad, to name but a few. He declined many opportunities to become involved in politics though he did act on occasions as an advisor to President's Hayes, Harrison and Grant - he was also a close friend and confidant of President McKinley whose ancestral home is at nearby Conagher, Dervock. Samuel Wesley died in 1919, aged 79.

Another notable local figure who carried the village name in his own was the journalist and author John Armoy Knox. He was born in Armoy in 1850 and emigrated to Texas when he was 22 years of age. In collaboration with Alexander Sweet, he co-founded the 'Texas Siftings' in 1881, which became one of the most popular illustrated publications in America with a weekly circulation in 1891 of 150,000 - the publication also had a London edition published in 1887. They sold the paper in 1895. John Knox also wrote several books including All About the Klondike Gold Mines (1897) and A Devil of a Trip (1888) and with Sweet wrote Sketches from Texas "Siftings" (1882), 'On a Mexican Mustang through Texas' (1883), and Three Dozen Good Stories from Texas Siftings (1887). He died in New York in 1906.