Having watched my wife Libbess, for about five years, labor doggedly at the research, correspondence, and writing of this factual biography of Alexander Stewart, I am now filled with admiration for her accomplishment. This little book provides for my generation of his descendants more than was ever known by us before about him, with a look at the nature of the man himself, his family, the times, and several places of his calling in 19th century Ontario, Canada.

So this is the proper time for me, with considerable embarassment, to tell you of the major error I made in the 1985 and 1986 tables of descent of our Stewart ancestors. I had assumed, in my 1986 table, that Alexander Stewart was the son of William Stewart and Elizabeth Grant of Nether Cluny farm near Dufftown, Scotland, as my Uncle Harold had assumed in his "Stewarts of Dwight", issued in 1962. This meant that our descent was the same as that of F. R. C. Stewart ("A Hunt for Arms", Robin Stewart, The Stewarts, Vol. XVII, #3, 1980, page 42) and extended from William Stewart and Elizabeth Grant back to John Stewart, First of Parkbeg, in the 1560s. Libbess's further and more recent research has shown that it appears impossible that Alexander Stewart was the son of that couple but rather was the son of a different William Stewart and Ann McDonald.

Along with this change in the family's line of descent we now have no reason to believe that our family had any connection with the Nether Cluny farm.

Please see the first table and the beginning of the text of Libbess's book about the above point. The lesson for amateur genealogists in all of this is to make no assumptions or pronouncements until all the available facts are in!

I join Libbess in wishing you pleasure in getting to know your great (or great-great) grandfather more personally and in more depth.