Roy Edwin Thomas was a folklorist, oral historian, and writer from Conway, Arkansas.

Thomas was born January 21, 1917, in Van Buren County, Arkansas, and he grew up on a farm at Bee Branch. He graduated high school from the Rural Consolidated School in 1934. Thomas graduated from the University of Arkansas with a bachelor’s in marketing in 1941, and earned a Ph.D in business administration from the University of Texas at Austin in 1961. Thomas enlisted in the military January 27, 1943, and served during World War II before being honorably discharged November 17, 1945; he was primarily stationed in Sydney, Australia. The insurance industry was the subject of his doctoral dissertation and his 1971 book, Insurance Information Sources. He taught both insurance and finance courses, including at Florida State University, Mexico City College, and Southern Illinois University. In September 1970, he began interviewing “old-timers” in Arkansas, and later expanded his scope to cover the broader Ozarks region as well as the Appalachians. His oral history interviews provided the basis for most of his writings over the next several decades, which focused primarily on regional dialect and culture. Thomas’ publications include Popular Folk Dictionary of Ozarks Talk (1972), Authentic Ozarks Stories (1972), and Come Go with Me: Old-Timer Stories from the Southern Mountains (1994). Thomas passed away October 25, 1999, at the age of 82.