Heartland Genealogy

While searching the Yates Center News for an article stating that Cleo B. Peake was awarded the purple heart, I discovered another cousin killed during World War II: PFC Lovell Mentzer. Notice of the death of Private First Class Lovell J. Mentzer first appeared in the May 3, 1945 issue of the Yates Center News on Page 1. PFC Lovell Mentzer Killed in Germany Mr. and Mrs. E. E. Mentzer received the information Tuesday from the War Department that their son, Private First Class Lovell J. Mentzer had died in Germany. Nineteen-year-old Lovell had seen ten and one-half months service in the European theatre. Graduating from Yates Center high school with the class of '44 he was inducted in the army and trained for an infantryman. In the latter part of last November he was sent over seas and was with the Seventh Army Private Mentzer has five brothers in the service, Technician Fourth Grade Keith in south Pacific, Corporal Talmadge (Tye) in England, T/5 Burdette with the AAF at C...

While going thru Ancestry Hints for my Wells line, I found an intriguing military record for a distant cousin, Byron Peake (Cleo Byron Peake). The records said he was reported missing in action on 28 April 1944. ("World War II and Korean Conflict Veterans Interred Overseas." Database. Ancestry.com . www.ancestry.com : 2018.)

When I spit in a test tube for my first DNA test, I had high hopes of proving a relationship to another Crawford line and ultimately breaking through our brick wall in early Kentucky. Those hopes were greatly diminished when I wasn't a match to a known descendant of the James and Martha (Knight) Crawford line. However, I had matches to descendants of William N. Crawford of Washington and Isaac and Nancy (Miller) Crawford of Kentucky. Those matches have revived hopes of figuring out how my Crawford line fits into the greater Crawford genealogy. Since I have those matches 'painted' on DNA painter, I decided to experiment to see how they overlapped with DNA from my 2nd cousins.