CIVIL WAR VETERAN 
Erastus Slocum

Erastus Slocum’s headstone tells us that he served with the 9th Minnesota Infantry in Company C.

image: FamilySearch

To find genealogical information about him—his date of birth, his date of death—several online databases were visited in the following order:

1. To establish the fact that Erastus served in the Union Army, we consulted U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009. 

This source provided the following information: 

“Erastus Slocum, living in Minnesota, enlisted in Company C, Minnesota 9th Infantry Regiment, on 19 August 1862 as a Private at the age of 18. He was mustered out on 24 August 1865 at Fort Snelling, Minnesota.”

2. To find out if Erastus 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.  

This source provided the following information:

“Erastus Slocum filed for a Civil War pension on 24 March 1897 as an Invalid. He filed this application in Wisconsin. His widow, Minnie E. Slocum, filed for a Civil War Widow’s pension 19 years later, on 28 February 1916, in California.”

3. Using information from source two, we looked at the California, Death Index, 1905-1939 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.

This source provided the following information:

“Erastus Slocum, born about 1844, died on 13 February 1916, in Los Angeles county.”

4. Finally, using information from source three, we found a digitized image of Erastus’ 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 1915-1919 no 221-403 > image 346 of 2705. 

This source provided the following information:

“Erastus Slocum was born on 28 December 1843, in New York. His father, Cook Slocum, and his mother, Elizabeth Smith, were both born in New York. Erastus died, aged 72, on 13 February 1916. He died while he was out walking on Orange Avenue near Arbelle Street in Long Beach, California. He had been a resident of California for 4 years, 4 months and 13 days. According to his death certificate, Erastus was buried in Sunnyside Cemetery on 17 February 1916, and the undertaker in charge of his interment was E. H. Cleveland.”

5. However, death certificates can contain incorrect information, and if you look for the Slocum gravestone at Sunnyside Cemetery, you will not find it there. A check on the FamilySearch® website of the “United States Headstone Applications for U.S. Military Veterans, 1925-1949” database shows that there was an application made in August of 1932 for a headstone which was shipped to the “Signal Hill Cemetery” (an old name for Long Beach Municipal Cemetery) on November 25, 1932. And, sure enough, at the Find A Grave website, Erastus Slocum’s headstone has been photographed in Long Beach Municipal Cemetery and it is displayed as Find A Grave Memorial# 9624687 at http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Slocum&GSiman=1&GScid=187755&GRid=9624687&.  

The five sources cited above create only the barest outline of Erastus Slocum’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 to California. We can examine 1913 and 1915 city directories to find out where he lived in Long Beach. 

To learn more about the Minnesota 9th Regiment Infantry, we can access an article by the Minnesota Historical Society at http://collections.mnhs.org/battleflags/index.php/10000991, and we can look on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_Minnesota_Volunteer_Infantry_Regiment.  John Lundstrom has written a fascinating story about his ancestors who fought in the Minnesota 9th. It is available in pdf format at http://m.postbulletin.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/eedition/e/7b/e7bc8add-6b44-505b-94f3-f0e58645bd66/52792eb216460.pdf.pdf. Lastly, we can also search Ancestry.com to see if there is information about Erastus in public family trees.

RESEARCH NOTE: Researching Erastus show us that we cannot believe everything we read on a death certificate! Sometimes it takes a little extra work to locate the true place of burial.