This message is forwarded from another list I belong to. Would there be anyone who could look at the City Directories of Victoria 1914, 1915, 1916 to see who the neighbours were, perhaps this might help. I would be willing to help, however, I live in West Kootenay, BC and don't have them available. Helen Smith Just wondering if anyone can help the lady in the story below. Mary Elizabeth Nixon, an 86 year-old adoptee, learned last year of her adoption possibly in Victoria BC Canada. She has British relatives from her adoptive family and, who knows, just might have British or US relatives from her birth family. If you have any information, or know someone that can help this lady and her family find her birth relatives, a reply to Jill Power (Mary's daughter) at: jill.power@bigpond.com or Jodie Paterson (columnist at the Victoria Times Colonist newspaper) at: jpaterson@times-colonist.com would be most appreciated. Please feel free to forward this on if you wish - hopefully we can help this family. Yvonne Evans Victoria BC Canada ------- Here's the link to the story on Mary Nixon: http://www.canada.com/victoria/timescolonist/archives/story asp?id=A4AF3F26-38FE-46BD-9DE1-7639041AC3F7 or read it below. NEWS STORY Identity Mystery Spans Continents Childhood memories provide clue to Oak Bay roots of adopted Australian woman Jody Paterson Victoria Times Colonist Mary Elizabeth Nixon, seen as a young woman... ....and in a recent family photo, is trying to discover details about her birth parents after learning she was adopted. Mary Elizabeth Nixon shown at age 2. If there's anything that 86 years of living will teach a person, it's that nothing is for certain. But at least there was always one thing that Mary Nixon was sure of: Her father was Alfred James Mirams. Her mother was Florence Louise. So it came as something of a shock last year for the Australian woman to read what a niece in England had written next to her name on the family tree "Adopted," the niece noted. Everything that Nixon thought she knew about herself changed in that instant Sure, there'd been clues over the years, like the time in 1968 when she had applied for a passport only to be told there was no record of her birth. Or the casual remark a British cousin once made about her being adopted, which she'd passed off at the time as just an odd thing to say. But her parents had never given her any reason to believe that she wasn't their birth child, and she hadn't suspected otherwise. Not until that genealogical chart arrived in the mail. Her poor niece, stricken to have revealed a secret that she hadn't known was secret, later told her that Nixon's British relatives have known for at least the past 40 years that she was adopted. When Nixon's daughter went travelling in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, Alfred Mirams even phoned ahead to warn the family to keep the secret. "I guess my mother must have felt it would be easier for me if I didn't know " said Nixon in an interview from Sydney. "Really, up until 30 or 40 years ago, there was always a bit of a shadow over being adopted. You'd hear people say, 'Oh -- they're adopted," with that small hush in their voice." Egged on by her two dumbfounded children, Nixon has now begun her search for the truth. It has led her here, to Oak Bay, and to the dimmest of memories of a two-storey house and a wooden duck that quacked when the neighbourhood children put pennies on its bill. Mary Elizabeth Nixon was born in Greater Victoria on Aug. 21, 1915, although she now has doubts about even that most basic of information. The family left Oak Bay for Cranbrook when Nixon was five or six, and moved soon after to Brisbane, Australia, aboard the ship Makura. As was the norm in B.C. at that time, adoption records weren't kept. Nothing but family lore documents the arrival of little Mary into the Mirams' household. Even the lore is at a premium: All that Nixon has learned so far is that her mother once told a relative that Mary was the youngest child of a neighbour, possibly Scottish, who was poised to send the infant to an orphanage until good-hearted Florence Mirams intervened. The Mirams family lived at the time at 2251 Willows Rd., which would eventually be renamed Eastdowne. There was a church nearby with a quacking wooden duck at the door. Alfred was a gymnast and a straight-backed veteran of the Boer War who "walked like a soldier until the day he died," says Nixon's daughter Jill Power. Florence who suffered for years from tuberculosis and died of cancer when Nixon was just 15, was a sweet and quiet woman with a reputation for "taking in strays " But the trail that leads back to the bigger questions around Nixon's childhood is cold. Both of her adopted parents are long dead. She grew up an only child. Her parents left behind no journals, correspondence, or any other written material. And she can't recall either of them ever talking about people they'd stayed in touch with in Greater Victoria. Nixon's family took out an ad in the Times Colonist two months ago, but got no response beyond an offer of help from local genealogy buff Rosemary Roy. "I appreciated other people's help so much when I was doing my own family searches that I try when I can to return the favour," says Roy, who is mailing Nixon a photo of a house that she thinks might be the one the Mirams lived in. Power says the only hope now is if someone sees photos of her mother and spots something familiar in her face. "Mom's got a lovely bone structure. If she had a brother or a sister out there, they'd know it when they saw the photo," says Power. "Or maybe someone remembers an old story, about a family who had to give one of their children away for some reason." Nixon rues having "no birthmarks, nothing exotic about me" that might have aided in the search. She has good bones and a talent for the violin, which she still plays. It isn't much to go on. "I don't really expect to find out anything," she admits. "And at this stage in my life, it doesn't worry me. But for my children's sake, we'd love to know more." jpaterson@times-colonist.com © Copyright2002 Victoria Times Colonist