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“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

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…

cover of Lockwood Book IV

Graven Images: The Lockwood Marble Works Books

I haven’t been writing much lately, and that’s because I’ve spent the better part of June conducting some much-needed research in New York, investigating our…

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…

Painting depicting Moving Day

Moving Day Madness

I just moved. It seems like I have done a lot of that, especially over the last ten years. This time was more painful than…

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…

David R. Caywood and Susan Hendrickson

Photo Friday: My great-great-great-great-great aunt, Susan Emily Hendrickson and her husband in 1909.

Sometimes you find things when you’re not even looking. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this photo of an ancestor going back six generations.…

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