CIVIL WAR VETERAN 

Heman J. Foote

In the Find A Grave index for Long Beach Municipal Cemetery, H. J. Foot/Foote is listed twice—once under “Foot” (because that is the spelling on his grave stone), and once under “Foote” (probably because that is the spelling used on his death certificate and in his obituary). To compound these spelling woes, his stone is one of the fallen, flush to the ground, and the inscription is rather difficult to read.

photo: QHGS

To find genealogical information about H. J. Foote—place of birth, date of death, given name—several online resources were consulted:

1. To establish the fact that Heman J. Foote served in the Union Army, we went online and consulted the National Parks Service’s “Soldiers and Sailors” page at http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/soldiers-and-sailors-database.htm. The search for him there took several tries with alternate spellings, finally producing results when a minimal amount of information (“Foote” and “113th”) was entered into the search boxes.  The reason it was was difficult to find Heman is because he is listed as “Henry J. Foote” on the National Park Service index. To discover more we looked at the FamilySearch Wiki’s “113th Regiment Union Illinois Volunteers” page at  https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/113th_Regiment,_Illinois_Infantry. In that source, he is listed as “Heman J. Foote,” as he is on almost every other Civil War document.

These sources provided the following information: 

“Heman J. Foote served in the 113th Regiment, Illinois Infantry, in Company B. He enlisted in the Union Army as a Private on 6 August 1862 and was mustered out as a Private on 30 June 1865 at Memphis, Tennessee.”

2. To find out if Heman was a Civil War pensioner, we looked for him in the National Archives and Records Administration. U.S., Civil War Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000, and found that his pension was filed under the alternate spelling of “Heman J. Foot.” 

This source provided the following data:

“Heman J. Foot filed for a Civil War pension in Illinois on 5 September 1892 as an Invalid. His widow, Mary, filed for a widow’s pension on 8 May 1905 in California.

3. Heman is not listed in the “1905-1939 California Death Index,” so we used death date information in the obituary posted on Find A Grave to locate a digitized image of his death certificate on the FamilySearch website at California, County Birth and Death Records, 1800-1994, index and images, FamilySearch, Los Angeles, Long Beach > Death certificates 1904-1911 no 1-140 > image 305 of 2542. 

This source provided the following information: 

“H. J. Foote was born on 16 December 1835, in Ohio, and died at the age of 69 years, 3 months and 12 days on 28 March 1905 in Long Beach at the corner of Appleton and Descanso. He had been at that address for 7 days, and usually resided at his home in Garden Grove with his wife. Heman was buried in Signal Hill Cemetery [an old name for Long Beach Municipal] on 30 March 1905 and W. P. Wilson & Son handled the mortuary arrangements. The informant was F. C. Foote.”

The three sources cited above create only a bare outline of Heman J. Foote’s life. To find out more about him—to make his story “come alive”—we can use U.S. Census records to trace his journey from Ohio to Illinois and thence to Long Beach, California; we can find out when he married Mary; and we can read more about the 113th Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry at http://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UIL0113RI and https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/113th_Regiment,_Illinois_Infantry. 

RESEARCH TIP: Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that there is only one “correct” way to spell your relative’s name. Use alternate surname and given name spellings when you search for your ancestors, and you will have more successes and fewer brick walls.