PFC Lovell Mentzer

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 Coffeyville, T/5 Edward at the home on furlough, Lt. Austin (j.G.), Corpus Christi, Tex

On June 14, 1945, the Yates Center News had a notice of the memorial service on page 1.

Cleo Byron Peake - Lost at Sea

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.)

DNA Puzzle - Crawford Line

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.

Down a 'Rabbit Hole' with Deeds

Thanks to a marriage record for Mary Crawford and Alexander Moore in 1793 in Madison County, I've been able to learn more about Mary Crawford.

Mary Crawford is shown on the tax lists for Madison County, Kentucky in 1787, 1789 and 1791. According to the document, "Tax Lists (1792-1840): An Overlooked Resource for Kentucky History and Land Title" by Kandie Adkinson, Land Office, Ky. Secretary of State, "women are included on the tax lists if they are the head of household." Thus, I've long assumed that Mary was a widow living in early Kentucky.

Mary Crawford - Wife of Alexander Moore

For a long time, the Mary Crawford of early Madison County has been a puzzle! Mary appears on the 1787 tax list for Madison County.(1)  She is also listed on the tax lists for 1789, 1791 and 1792 -- all in Madison County, Kentucky.(2)

In 1791, Mary purchases 100 acres of land on Sugar Creek from Richard Cave.(3)

Ancestry Hints: Public vs Private Tree

I'm writing in response to Russ Worthington's comment on the Genea-Musing's blog post,

When Did Ancestry.com Last Index Ancestry Member Trees? In the comment, Russ brings up the issue of hints not showing. Since I haven't noticed an issue with 'missing' hints on my un-indexed tree, Russ's post made me question whether I was indeed missing hints. However, I did notice one difference between my tree and Russ's experiment. I work with a public tree and Russ' test was with a private tree.

Thus, I wanted to know whether public trees produced hints when the tree lacked Ancestry sources. Thus, I needed a public tree (small) without Ancestry sources. Since I've been searching for Judson Crawford to see if my tree was indexed, I decided to create a small public tree on Ancestry for Judson Crawford, his wife, children and parents. 

My first attempt at creating the tree was to drag Judson and his family into a new tree. When I tried to use TreeShare with this new tree, I did not get the option to upload the tree. Instead this small tree was connecting to my large tree on Ancestry.

For my second attempt, I created a Gedcom for Judson and his family. I then imported that gedcom into a new RootsMagic file. Again, I couldn't use TreeShare to upload this tree to Ancestry. 

On the third try, I uploaded the previously created Gedcom to Ancestry. I then used TreeShare to download that tree into RootsMagic. [JudsonTrial2]

Lightbulbs started appearing in the RootsMagic tree shortly after the download completed.

On Ancestry, those same individuals with light bulbs in RootsMagic had hints in Ancestry.

Based on this experience, I would conclude that there might be a difference between private and public trees in the way hints are populated. Unfortunately, the public/private tree status was not the only variable in our two experiments. Russ uploaded his data from his software to Ancestry and I downloaded my experimental tree from Ancestry to my software. In addition, I'm using RootsMagic while Russ is using FamilyTree Maker.