Background Image

“Everything is relative except relatives,
and they are absolute.”

-Alfred Steiglitz

Family history is a way to bring our ancestors to life.

This blog details my journey as a genealogist and is a means to record my notes, recent discoveries, and the stories of my ancestors. The goal of Relatively is to inspire other family historians to preserve and share their own family stories.

RECENT POSTS

photo of McKnight Family

Love and Victory: Photo of the McKnight Family

About the photo: The first thing that caught my eye in this photo of my great-grandmother Matilda (Goettisheim) McKnight and the first five of her…

Citizen Alfred Knowles

Citizen Alfred Knowles

It’s unclear when most of my ancestors became American citizens. Some immigrated to the U.S. before the American Revolution, while others arrived as late as…

James Joseph McKnight

Poppy

On my last trip to New York, I visited a family member whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. Before I left, she handed…

Marriage Certificate for Anne Flood and Alexandeer McCulloch

FOUND: My Great-Grandmother’s Sister, Anne Flood

Last month, the New York City Municipal Archives released 9.3 million historical vital records on a free online platform. For me, this was like hitting…

tree in a field of grass with overlay of a DNA helix

Y-DNA Mystery: Hendrickson or Henderson?

One mystery that has plagued me over the years is trying to unearth our Hendrickson family origins. Faced with the challenge of tracing our direct…

family heirlooms

Behind the Scenes: Preserving Family Heirlooms

A few years ago, my mother entrusted me with our family heirlooms. It included documents, photos, and various artifacts such as my grandfather’s military medals, his…

Subscribe

Stay up to date. Receive an email when a new blog post is published.