At 11 E. Main St. in Middletown, Dr. Jerome D. Niles operated a home for unwed mothers in the 1930s and early 1940s. MORE ON THE WEB A black market adoptee's site to help others

MIDDLETOWN -- An old brick residential building in downtown Middletown has become the focal point for an untold number of middle-aged men and women searching for their true identity.

Behind the doors at 11 E. Main St., Dr. Jerome D. Niles operated a home for unwed mothers in the 1930s and early 1940s -- and the confidentiality he promised has nearly closed the door to the information the babies born under his care are so desperately seeking.

Those babies, now in their 50s and 60s, are asking simple questions that most people can answer without a moment's thought: 

Who was my mother?

Who was my father?

Where am I from?

These are questions that people such as Ann Weinblad and Terry Sheron can ask but not answer.

Their mothers became pregnant at a time when abortion was virtually unavailable and unwed motherhood was perhaps the greatest shame a woman could bring upon her family.

These young women needed a secluded place to spend the last months of their pregnancies, competent medical care and an assurance that a good home would be found for their babies.

So they came to Niles, whose home for unwed mothers promised the utmost in discretion.

Now, a half-century later, that discretion is causing heartache and frustration for the babies who passed through his doors.

Few records exist and those that do are suspect. The doctor and his secretary are dead, their files apparently destroyed. No one even knows for sure how many babies Niles delivered.

When he took the Delaware medical licensing exam in 1910 he scored a 75.8 -- with 75 being the minimum passing score.After completing his residency in Philadelphia, Niles moved about 1907 to Townsend, where he would live the rest of his life. 

A respected physician, Niles served as president of the Delaware Medical Society and the New Castle County Medical Society. In 1945, he was named president of the state Board of Health. A street in Townsend bears his name.

Sometime about 1930 -- the records have been lost or destroyed -- Niles converted his general practice in Middletown into a home for unwed mothers.

"They had a regular hotel-like setup for them, rooms, areas for cooking," said John Weid- lein, who owns the building. "It was nice. It was a high-class place."

Some of the Niles babies have found their way to Weid- lein's doorstep in recent years, but he has little information to give them.

Niles "had a nurse who knew the names of the girls and their parents, and when he passed away she refused to give away any of the information," Weid-lein said.

Thinking back on conversations he had years ago with old-timers who remembered Niles, Weidlein was struck by what they omitted.

"Everyone knew that he had a home for unwed mothers, but no one ever said anything about the babies," he said.

"I don't remember anyone saying anything about the babies."

From time to time, a Niles baby arrives in Middletown, hoping to put together the pieces of a puzzle that have been scattered by the winds of time.

Niles died Jan. 18, 1963.

Chances are, the person will end up at Butler & Cooke Antiques at 13 E. Main St., an old brick building that housed the Peoples National Bank before it went bust during the Depression.

There they will find proprietor Jan Butler ensconced among her lamps and other artifacts.

"These people say, 'I want to see this place. This is where I was born,' " Butler said.

Or they might end up next door at 11 E. Main St., looking for a clue about the residential building's past.

Sometimes they will find their way to the office of Ellen Combs-Davis, a septuagenarian who has lived her life in Middletown and seen her share of local history.

There they might show her a birth certificate, their only real link to a mother they never knew.

Combs-Davis will share what she knows about Niles, but there is little she can do to help.

She helps adoptees who are seeking their birth parents, and birth parents who are seeking their natural children.

She does not speak highly of Niles.

Because Niles was paid by the unwed mothers and may have collected fees from couples who adopted the babies, his actions were unethical, Farrow said.

And because many of the Niles babies wound up with birth certificates bearing inaccurate or misleading information, and normal adoption procedures were skirted, Farrow places Niles squarely in the ranks of the black-market baby operations so prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s.

"Adoption is a moneymaking business," Farrow said. "Nobody wanted to deal with it back then, and people don't want to deal with it today."

According to Farrow, who has tried to help several Niles babies research their origins, many of the unwed mothers were young Jewish women from New York and northern New Jersey. Many of the babies were placed with Jewish families in those areas.

The lack of verifiable information in the Niles adoptions has made it almost impossible for Farrow to help the Niles babies who have come to her for help.

"So many of them have false names," Farrow said. 

One of the Niles babies who came to Farrow for help was Ann Weinblad.

Curiosity about her birth certificate led Weinblad on a quest in search of her identity, a quest that led from her home on Long Island in Williston Park, N.Y., to Middletown.

Weinblad is 62, a Long Island resident who said her chief occupation has been "raising children, dogs and turtles."

When she was a child, her parents told her she had been left on the steps of an orphanage, and because it was June 14 -- Flag Day -- the orphanage named her Betsy Ross.

Her parents gave her their last name -- Arnold -- but when she was 21, she asked for her adoption papers. Her birth certificate identified Weinblad as Elizabeth Ross.

She eventually learned that her birth mother's name probably was Ross, but that the woman's first name most likely was a fabrication.

Weinblad also learned that her adoptive parents picked her up in Langhorne, Pa., home of The Veil -- a notorious babies-for-sale operation ruun by Charles M. Janes and his wife.

The Veil, which also operated a maternity home at Marshall and Matlack streets in West Chester, Pa., was denied a license by the state and was forced to close in the late 1930s.

Weinblad's sister wasn't a Niles baby. She was a Veil baby, adopted through the West Chester home.

Other Niles babies searching for their roots have gravitated toward Weinblad, and they share their experiences with her.

Some people told her Niles placed advertisements in the Jewish newspapers in Brooklyn about his services, Weinblad said.

Weinblad went to Middletown several years ago and met with Niles' secretary, Rebecca Bramble.

"I was trying to endear Rebecca Bramble to me. I wrote her a letter, how [Niles] really helped out a lot of people and he helped a lot of babies," Weinblad said.

But Bramble could not or would not supply any information.

Weinblad is frustrated with the New York state law that keeps her from seeing the papers her birth mother may have signed giving her up for adoption.

She said she harbors no ill will toward Niles. But she said she does find the legacy of Niles' practice somewhat distasteful.

"Of course, he was in it for the money," Weinblad said.

"It was a good market. It was a good business, and it is a good business today. People who are attempting so desperately [to have a baby] will pay any price," she said.

"It's kind of sordid, no matter which way you look at it."

Her older brother was born in West Chester, Pa., in 1937 -- possibly at The Veil.

Niles delivered her younger brother in 1944 in Middletown.

And though she has no birth certificate to prove it, Sheron has concluded she was delivered by Niles in 1938.

"How my parents found him, I'd like to know," said Sheron, who sells display advertising at a small Connecticut newspaper.

Sheron stumbled across the fact that she was adopted during a conversation with an aunt in 1985.

"In 1985, I went to my mother and told her, 'It's time, here it is,' " Sheron said. "She was very upset."

Sheron's mother "couldn't and wouldn't remember anything," she said.

Sheron believes her parents went to Niles for their children because they might not have qualified for a conventional adoption.

"My parents were older, and probably going for a newborn infant. My mother was 38, my father about the same age. I would think that had been a factor," Sheron said.

Sheron's older brother, a major in the Air Force, died in 1972, never knowing he had been adopted.

Her younger brother's birth certificate, signed by Niles, lists the adoptive parents as the birth parents -- a ruse used at The Veil and other black--market baby operations to circumvent adoption laws.

"These guys were taking money from the customer and taking money from the pregnant mother. They were taking money both ways," Sheron said.

Sheron has three sons and four grandchildren, and wishes she could tell them something about their heritage.

But with no birth certificate and little hope of ever finding one, she cannot.

Though Sheron remains angry about the circumstances of her adoption, she wants to believe that perhaps the Middletown physician "really had a good heart."

Regardless of Niles' motivation, the hurt remains.

"I just feel outraged, because my mother, when I told her I needed to know who I was, she was of the old school and her remark to me was: 'You know, I just could have left you there. I could have left you there.' And it cut so deep ... "

"His younger son John was killed in an airplane accident a day before he went in the service for World War II," Combs-Davis recalled.

The Nileses' other son, Jerome D. Niles Jr., died in 1998. Some of the Niles babies who tracked him down said they found him either unwilling or unable to provide any information.

The doctor's wife, Loretta Niles, died in 1980.

Niles' only living relative, a granddaughter who lives in the Washington, D.C., area, said she had no information on the doctor.

Not long ago, a woman approached Combs-Davis, looking for information.

"She was born at the Delaware Hospital; she said she understood her mother had worked in a bank on Main Street in Middletown and that she lived on East Main Street," Combs-Davis said. Delaware Hospital is now Wilmington Hospital.

Combs-Davis told her where Niles' office was, and that the bank -- now the antiques shop -- was next door.

The woman showed Combs-Davis a birth certificate, but the birth mother's name had proved to be bogus.

"I said, 'Well, it would be natural for your mother not to use her real name,' " Combs-Davis said. "She was glad to get that far, but I couldn't tell her anything else."

Middletown was an ideal location for a practice such as Niles'. Located on a major north-south highway and accessible by rail, Middletown was far enough from New York to ensure anonymity but close enough for convenient travel.

"In those days, when a girl got pregnant, she would want to go far away from home," Combs-Davis said.

When Niles died, the weekly Middletown Transcript published a detailed obituary. But no mention was made of the maternity home at 11 E. Main St., even though "everyone in Middletown knew about it," building-owner Weidlein said.

Combs-Davis said Niles was respected in Middletown, and it would be unfair to second-guess his motivation so many years later.

"He gave a home to unwed mothers, and protected them and saved their children," Combs-Davis said.

"So he did society a favor."