in response to "The man credited with introducing the world to the ballad Tom Dooley was Frank Proffit who was a singer and banjo player/maker. He sang it for a collector (maybe one of the Lomaxes?) in the 30's."
The collectors of this song were Anne and Frank Warner. They were friendly with Alan Lomax, who first published the song.

From Traditional American Folk Songs from the Anne & Frank Warner Collection, ©1984, Anne Warner, p.289.

"Tom Dooley - Frank Proffitt, 1938
"This was one of the songs Frank Proffitt sang to us the first day we met him in June 1938. It was the first song he remembered hearing his father pick on a banjo. Frank's grandmother, Adeline Perdue, lived in Wilkes County and knew both Tom and Laura Foster, for Tom Dooley - really Tom Dula - did live. Tom was a native of Wilkes County and was known to be a wild one. He rode hard and drank hard and had a way with the ladies, especially Laura Foster. When the Civil War came he joined the Confederates and fought until he was taken prisoner and put in a stockade at Kinston, North Carolina. After the war he made his way home on foot, and took up his old ways. He renewed his relationship with Laura but also was involved with Ann Melton, though she had a husband and two children. One day, at Ann's instigation, many believed, Tom lured Laura Foster into riding off with him. On the hillside he stabbed Laura and buried her in a shallow grave. It is a sordid tale, well covered even by the New York papers who sent correspondents to cover the two trials, which lasted two years. Tom, to the end, refused to implicate Ann, though she had been arrested too, so eventually she was freed. Tom was convicted and hanged in 1868.
"Many songs were written about Tom Dooley, but it is the one that came down in Frank's family that eventually went around the world and is believed to have sparked the world-wide interest in American folk music."

This is the story, as the Proffitt family believed it to be, and as passed on to the Warners.