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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

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…

Sophmore class at Springfield High School, 1929

Where’s Grandpa?

The Hendrickson family made Brooklyn and Long Island their home for at least 8 generations. So when I found my great-grandparents, Clarkson and Olive Hendrickson…

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…

Graves of McCulloch and Hendrickson Families

An Unexpected Connection at Green-Wood Cemetery

Have you experienced any strange coincidences in your family tree? By definition, a coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal…

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…

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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