Using \footnotemark
in a minipage with \footnotetext
uses numbers to mark the footnote and letters to label the foot note text.
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
This\footnotemark[3] is a test\footnotemark[2].
\footnotemark[3]{test}
\footnotetext[2]{two}
\end{minipage}
\end{document}
I looked at these questions (2 and 3) and played around with
\usepackage{footmisc}
\renewcommand\thempfootnote{\fnsymbol{mpfootnote}}
but couldn't work it out.