The George Mentzer Family
Have you ever found a family history that adds life and personality to the names and dates in your genealogy database?
For this week’s Monday’s Diggings, I’m sharing a biography of the George Mentzer family published in the July 1970 issue of In the Beginning, the bulletin of the Woodson County Historical Society.
Titled “The George Mentzer Family,” the article is much more than a brief biographical sketch. It tells of Civil War service, migration by covered wagon, the building of a Kansas homestead, a long friendship, encounters with Native Americans, an early telephone—and even the capture of an escaped cattle thief.
From Massachusetts to Illinois
George Mentzer was born 12 June 1838 in Stowe, Massachusetts, the son of Phillip and Orinda (Miles) Mentzer. His father was a native of Germany, and George was one of ten children.
When the Civil War began, George enlisted in Company C, 24th Massachusetts Infantry. He participated in several battles and, according to the biography, was one of only nine soldiers from his company to survive one engagement. After three years of service, he was discharged at Petersburg, Virginia.
Following the war, George returned to Massachusetts and spent the winter in Boston before making his way west to Kewanee, Illinois. There he met Emeline Minnick, who was working as a clerk in a store.
George and Emeline married on 1 January 1867 at Kewanee. Emeline was a daughter of John Minnick, a Pennsylvania German. Although her name was Emeline, she was generally known as Emma.
Seeking a Home on the Kansas Prairie
Around 1870, George Mentzer came to Woodson County looking for a home on the prairie.
On 16 May 1870, he entered into a contract with the MKT Railway to purchase 160 acres in the northeast corner of Section 6, Township 24, Range 14. T. A. Goodnow, then the Katy land agent at Neosho Falls, handled the transaction. Mentzer made a deposit of $67 toward the $738.67 called for by the five-year contract and then returned to Kewanee.
The following spring, George headed west again.
This time he brought his wife, Emeline; their sons, Charles O. and John Fred; and a close friend, George W. Allen. Traveling in a covered wagon, they arrived at Neosho Falls in May 1871.
George found rooms for Emeline and the boys at the Falls House while he and Allen prepared the homestead.
The two men loaded supplies and lumber and traveled to the prairie property. The land was mostly prairie grass except where West Owl Creek crossed the southwest corner. They built a small two-room cabin and added the fences and sheds needed for the new farm. Only then did George return to Neosho Falls for his family.
A Friendship That Came West
One of the details I find especially interesting is the role of George W. Allen.
Allen was a close friend of George Mentzer, and the biography suggests that he may have been with George throughout the Civil War. Whether that wartime connection can be independently documented is a question for further research, but Allen clearly played an important role in the Mentzer family’s move to Kansas.
He traveled west with them, helped prepare their homestead, and stayed with the family for a time while obtaining land of his own—the southeast quarter of Section 36, Township 24, Range 14. He later married a schoolteacher from Toronto and moved onto his nearby farm.
That detail recently helped me understand another record in my files.
In an 1899 Woodson County deed, George W. Allen—then a widower living in Northborough, Worcester County, Massachusetts—sold that same quarter section to Fred Mentzer of Yates Center.
The deed alone raised questions. Why did a man living in Massachusetts own Kansas land? Why was he selling it to a Mentzer?
The 1970 biography supplied the missing context.
The George and Emeline Mentzer Family
George and Emeline were the parents of eight children. The biography identifies them and provides information about many of their spouses and descendants:
- Charles O. Mentzer, who married Nettie Wells
- John Fred Mentzer, who married Anna Wells
- Susie May Mentzer, who married Ed Tunnicliff
- Henry A. Mentzer, who married May Litton
- Phillip E. Mentzer, who married Anna Sheflin
- Ernest E. Mentzer, who married Edith Drummond
- Clara E. Mentzer, who married John W. Williams
- Laddie, who died at six months of age
For a family historian, the lists of children and grandchildren are especially valuable because they provide clues for tracing multiple descendant lines.
Life Along West Owl Creek
The biography also preserves stories that would be difficult—if not impossible—to find in courthouse records.
During the Mentzer family’s early years along a branch of Owl Creek, Native Americans traveling from the reservation toward Indian Territory camped along the creek. They were described as friendly visitors to the Mentzer home.
One story tells of George finding two men digging into the bank along West Owl Creek. When he asked what they were doing, they reportedly replied that they were looking for “good eats”—while digging out a skunk.
Another story recalls visitors coming to the Mentzer house to bargain for eggs and enjoying frightening the two younger boys, Charley and Fred.
These small anecdotes may not establish births, marriages, or deaths, but they help us imagine the setting in which the family lived.
One of the County’s Early Telephones
George Mentzer reportedly had one of the first telephones in the county.
He and C. B. Goodale, who lived about two miles to the north, each obtained a telephone and strung a line between their homes so they could talk to one another.
For someone who had traveled west by covered wagon and built a two-room cabin on the prairie, that telephone must have represented an extraordinary change within a single lifetime.
The Escaped Cattle Thief
Perhaps the most dramatic story in the biography begins on a Sunday morning in December 1887.
The Mentzer family was preparing to attend Sunday school at the Methodist Church in Yates Center when a man came to the door. He claimed to be taking some kind of census, but George became suspicious after noticing that the stranger carried a gun.
George had recently sold hogs and initially wondered whether the man had followed him home from Yates Center. Then he remembered hearing that a man accused of cattle theft had escaped from the law in Belmont Township.
George sent word to town while the rest of the family went to church.
Joe Allen and Will Pruit came to the Mentzer home and confronted the stranger. The situation became dangerous enough that Abe Smith, a nearby neighbor and early-day sheriff of Woodson County, arrived and helped subdue the man.
The prisoner was identified as Charley Mills, an accused cattle thief and escaped prisoner. He was taken to jail at Eureka—only to escape again a short time later. According to the biography, that was the last trace found of him.
Why This Biography Matters
As genealogists, we often build lives from scattered records—census schedules, deeds, military files, marriage records, obituaries, probate papers, and cemetery records.
Each document contributes facts.
But a biography like this one contributes something different. It connects those facts into a story. It explains why a Massachusetts-born Civil War veteran came to Kansas. It describes a covered-wagon journey and the building of a two-room cabin. It preserves the name of a close friend who helped establish the homestead. It identifies children and grandchildren. And it records stories that might otherwise have disappeared.
At the same time, I try to remember that a locally published biography is a source to investigate, not automatic proof of every statement it contains. Some details—particularly the suggestion that George W. Allen served alongside George Mentzer during the Civil War—deserve further research and correlation with contemporary records.
Still, this biography has already demonstrated its value. It helped explain the relationship behind an 1899 deed that otherwise seemed puzzling.
And it reminded me once again that sometimes the best clue is hiding not in a courthouse volume, but in the pages of an old local historical society bulletin.
That is why I keep digging.
Source: “The George Mentzer Family,” In the Beginning, Woodson County Historical Society, July 1970.