Almost half a century ago I met my future husband, David Smithson Stewart, and was first introduced to the Stewart family. Grandfather Joseph William Alexander Stewart was then the patriarch of a family consisting of seven children and their spouses and descendants. Even after his death, "J. W. A." remained dominant in the family constellation. Only in recent years did I notice the shadowy figure of his father, Alexander Stewart: the illiterate country boy who became a self-taught minister and whose minister son and grandsons got doctoral degrees; the landless immigrant who bought land that is still "home" to his descendants.

I became curious about Alexander Stewart and started to see what I could find out about him. The more I learned the more I wanted to know. The search became an intriguing detective story.

Now I have written up my findings. Why? First, to introduce this unusual man to his descendants of today and tomorrow. Knowing their family's past may help them to understand their family a little better in the present. People seem to need to know their origins, at least many do. Our differences from an ancestor, as much as any similarities we find, may help to define ourselves.

Secondly, his life was unfamiliar territory for me to explore: he was a Scot and a Canadian, I was born and bred in the United States; he lived in the rural 19th century, I live in the urban 20th; he was a Baptist missionary, I am a humanist Quaker; he was a man, I am a wife and mother.

A novelist whose central character has a strong calling to an unremunerative vocation has the problem of how to reconcile his hero's devotion to his calling with his love of and obligations to wife and children. Alexander Stewart was faced with this situation in real life.

His life has been, for me, a window on other times, other places and above all, other ways of thinking and feeling.

Alexander Stewart lived a long life, to the full. May his descendants have his strength, his warmth toward people, and his love of life!

Elizabeth Cate Hoisington Stewart