Well, what do you know! There's a Houston in Georgia and I somehow missed it! Awesome, that is probably what is says.
Yes, I was very surprised that it said he was born in Georgia. If I were not 100% sure that this was his Civil War discharge...his headstone says that this was the regiment he was in and there were only 600 men in that regiment (the only Union regiment in Arkansas), so I know it has to be him. He's the only one in the regiment named Joseph Forman! Everything else says Kentucky (apart from his 1900 census record, by which time he was in his 80s and might not have been able to remember his birthplace, or someone else may have answered for him and been wrong), but maybe he grew up in Kentucky but was born in Georgia (my best guess), so always thought of himself as being from Kentucky. Where you're from and where you're born...I was born across the state line in the nearest hospital, so there's where I'm from (the state I have lived in my whole life) versus where I was born (the closest city with a major hospital).
I have a DNA link to some Foremans who lived first in what is now WV and then in KY (in Bourbon and Montgomery Counties in KY), but I cannot find a paper trail connection to those families, so I am exploring this Georgia avenue to see what comes of it. Now that I think it's likely that this says Houston, it's something to explore! It could be a mistake, of course. I don't know how you could write 'Houston in the state of Georgia' when you meant 'Bourbon County, Kentucky' (there's no document that says he was born in Bourbon Co, but someone put it on Find a Grave, and they had to have a reason to think it was accurate...probably whatever the reason was, is connected to why I have DNA matches with descendants of Captain William Foreman who died in 1777 in Foreman's Defeat). But they had to write discharge papers for hundreds of men that day (the day they mustered out the entire regiment) so maybe they copied it off of someone else's and didn't notice the mistake. Also, the stated age would make him born in 1824, whereas every other document makes it clear that he was born between 1816-1818 and his headstone says 1818, plus I have a sworn testimony as to his age at a later date and if you do that math, he was born in 1818 per that! (I think in that case, he gave his age as of when he enlisted, which would explain the discrepancy). Anyway, thanks SO much! I hope this is enough to help me figure out who his parents were.
