William Henry Foote

William Henry Foote was born on December 20, 1794 in Colchester, Connecticut.[1][2] His father was Stephen Foote and his mother, Hannah Waterman Foote.[1]

He graduated from Yale University in 1816.[1] He then studied at the Princeton Theological Seminary from 1818 to 1819, where he became an ordained Presbyterian minister.[1]

Foote served as a Presbyterian minister in Woodstock, Virginia from 1822 to 1824.[1] He then preached at Mount Bethel Church until 1833.[1] Meanwhile, he served as the Principal of the Romney Academy in Romney, West Virginia from 1826 to 1838.[1] He also served as the first pastor of Strasburg Presbyterian Church in Strasburg, Virginia.[3]

From 1838 to 1845, Foote served as an agent for the Central Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church.[1][4] He visited many Presbyterian churches in Virginia and North Carolina during that time.[4] From 1845 to the early 1860s, he also preached at the Romney Presbyterian Church in Romney as well as in Springfield and Patterson's Creek.[1]

In 1846, Foote published Sketches of North Carolina, Historical and Biographical, based on his experience.[4] The book starts with a history of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and the War of the Regulation, two catalysts in the secession of the American colonies from Great Britain, and recounts the establishment of a Presbyterian community in Duplin County, North Carolina by immigrants from Ulster as early as 1736.[4] It goes on to explain the history of Presbyterians in North Carolina until 1845.[4] The book was reprinted posthumously in 1965.[4]

Foote received a Doctorate of Divinity (D.D.) from Hampden–Sydney College (H–SC) in 1847.[1] He served on its Board of Trustees from 1851 to 1870, and Board President from 1864 to 1866.[5] He also served on the Board of Trustees of Union Presbyterian Seminary, then the Theology department at H–SC from 1838 to 1869.[5] While he was at H–SC, he wrote a two-volume history of Presbyterians in Virginia; Sketches of Virginia, Historical and Biographical (1850) and Sketches of Virginia, Historical and Biographical, Second Series (1855).[5]

During the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865, he served as a Presbyterian chaplain in the Confederate States Army.[1] He then returned to preaching in Virginia after the war.[1] In 1869, he also wrote The Huguenots, or Reformed French Church, a history of the Huguenot, descendants of the Reformed Church of France.[6]

On February 21, 1822, Foote married Eliza Wilson Glass, the daughter of the Reverend Joseph Glass.[1] They had two daughters:

• Anne Waterman Foote,[1] married to James Dillon Armstrong
• Eliza Wilson Foote.[1]

After his first wife died in April 1835, he married Arabella Gilliam on October 31, 1838.[1] They had a daughter:

• Mary Arabella Foote.[1]

Foote died on November 22, 1869 in Romney, West Virginia.[1][2] He was buried at the Indian Mound Cemetery in Romney.[2]