Dorothy Newkirk Stewart

Twenty years would pass from that day I first discovered the block prints in my mother’s basement. Then, in 2015, my 78 year-old father was diagnosed with cancer; he began putting his affairs in order, creating a family tree and sharing photographs from his childhood that my sisters and I had never seen before.

As the oldest child, I felt responsible to learn more about our genealogy. I joined Ancestry.com and began researching our family’s roots. Dad told me about his first cousin Elizabeth, who lived in Abiquiu, New Mexico, on a remote wilderness ranch in a canyon. He knew of my interest in our relative Dorothy Stewart and showed me a book that she had printed in the 1950s of Hamlet. Apparently, Elizabeth had met Dorothy when she was a child. Eager to learn more about them both, I flew to New Mexico that October.

I rented a car and drove to Elizabeth’s ranch, seven miles down a rutted road with potholes as big as craters. However, I could barely keep my eyes on the road; the vertical canyon walls, layered in shades of orange, yellow, and lavender, against the brilliant blue sky, were breathtaking.