Oldfield Family

Mabel Oldfield (née Dimock) was born on April 9, 1878, and Walter Oldfield was born on October 19, 1878. Mabel and Walter Oldfield were married in Hong Kong in 1910, and they had two children (Mildred and Ernest) born in 1911. The Oldfields worked as Canadian missionaries with the New York-based Christian and Missionary Alliance during the first half of the twentieth century. Between 1900 and 1947, Mabel and Walter Oldfield were stationed in Guangxi, China where they were actively involved in developing and implementing Christian conversion and evangelization programs. They published several accounts (books and pamphlets) of their missionary activities and lived experiences in Guangxi, China including With You Alway: The Life of a South China Missionary, Kidnapped by Chinese Bandits, Over “the Hump” with God, Pioneering in Kwangsi [Guangxi]: The Story of Alliance Missions in South China, Travels Among the Tribesmen, and Two Hundred Miles of Miracles. Mabel and Walter Oldfield left China definitively in 1947 and returned to Canada. Walter Oldfield died in 1958, and Mabel Oldfield died in 1965.

Mildred Oldfield (married name Millar) lived with her parents in China until the age of 16 when she returned to Canada. Mildred would later attend Victoria College, University of Toronto from 1929-1933, and she married F. Graham Millar in 1934 or 1935. Both graduated 1933. Graham Millar’s mother was E. Maud Graham, who wrote A Canadian Girl in South Africa. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library holds the papers of E. Maud Graham and F. Graham Millar.