Have you ever found a record on Find a Grave that you think might be an ancestor’s sibling but can’t find that one document to prove it? That’s where I stand with the record for Elizabeth Minnick.
I think the Elizabeth Minnick buried in Yates Center, Kansas is Mary Elizabeth Minnick, daughter of John and Elizabeth Minnick of Henry County, Illinois. If so, then she would be the sister of my great-grandmother, Emeline Minnick Mentzer.
Even though the cemetery record provides a death year, I have not been able to find an obituary in the Woodson County, Kansas papers nor in the Henry County, Illinois papers. Thus, I don’t have a document verifying this relationship.
However, I do have census records that place Mary E. Minnick in Woodson County, Kansas. In 1915, Mary E Minnick was living in the household of Mrs. Emeline Mentzer in Yates Center, Woodson County, Kansas.
Again in 1920, Mary E Minnick is listed in the household of Emaline Mentzer. This census record identifies Mary E. Minnick as a sister of Emaline Mentzer.
Again in 1925, Mary E Minnick was listed as a sister to Emeline Mentzer in the Woodson County, Kansas census.
All of the census records refer to Emeline Mentzer’s sister as Mary E. Minnick and not as Lizzie. However, in 1924, a death notice appears in the Woodson County Journal for a niece of Emeline. This article also identifies Lizzie Minnick.
Mrs. W. F. Stotler, a niece of Mrs. George Mentzer and Miss Lizzie Minnick, died June 15 at her home in Shenanadoan, Iowa.
“Local News,” Woodson County Journal (Yates Center, Kansas), 26 June 1924, page 3; digital image, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : viewed online 3 April 2022).
I don’t have an obituary or a death certificate to confirm that the Lizzie Minnick buried in 1926 in Yates Center is in fact the sister of Emeline Minnick Mentzer. However, the census and newspaper records support the possibility that the Lizzie Minnick buried in Yates Center is Mary E. Minnick, sister of Emeline Minnick.
Heartland Genealogy 
Not only do they support it, but if there is no credible evidence that there was another woman by that name living in the vicinity or anywhere else who might be buried in that place and time, I’d say “case closed.”