Finding Miranda

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           Finding Miranda

It has been reported from San Franscisco that men while digging a basement, made a discovery,  a coffin containing the body of a 19th century 3-year-old girl. The body seen through two windows in the well-sealed casket, was well-preserved. The girl had been dressed in a long white embroidered dress. There was lavender in her hair, a lavender cross over her heart and eucalyptus leaves at her side. A rose was in her right hand.

The bronze and lead coffin and the preparations for her burial, indicated that she came from wealth. But who was she? What was her name? Where did she live?

Answers to these questions may someday come from strands of her blonde hair. Anthropology professor Jelmer Eerkens, of the University of California Davis,  plans to snip the hair into smaller pieces and analyze the hair for protein and other chemicals and to identify its isotope signature. It would be possible to determine the child's diet.  Also where she may have lived, and many other things.

The mystery girl has been named "Miranda Eve." The girl's coffin will be placed inside  a second larger wooden coffin with the words "Miranda," carved on the top, and with a plush purple interior. The Odd Fellows and Greenlaw Park donated $7,000 for her burial. Greenlaw undertaker Paula Meyses, said Miranda Eve's grave will be with the infants and children section of the cemetery. Elissa Davey is the director of Garden of Innocence, a charity based near San Diego that buries bodies of unidentified children.
My thanks to Steve Rubinstein, staff writer of the San Franscisco Chronicle.

     Aloha,
     Grant