A STRANGE DISCOVERY: PART TWO OF THE GEORGIA TANN FILES

Lilith, a figure in ancient Jewish folklore, was often called the “night monster” because she was said to have stolen babies from mothers in the night. In Memphis Tennessee in the 1930s and ’40s, a real monster walked the city streets - only this time, she was disguised as a kind and caring public servant. 

Georgia Tann, the executive leader of the Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children's Home from the 1920s to the late 1940s, preyed on young, vulnerable Southern girls from poverty-stricken areas in rural states including Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Since the beginning of human society, women have been devalued and displaced because of unexpected pregnancy, but the way Tann treated these women and their children far exceed the scope and very nature of human evil.

Some women gave their babies willingly to Tann, while others had no idea she stole their children and gave them to paying families across the United States. Some of Tann's most famous clients allegedly included Hollywood stars Mary Pickford, Joan Crawford, and June Alyson. Tann devalued women and used innocent children as cash cows to fund her extravagant lifestyle.

Although several accounts of Georgia Tann’s misdeeds are now in popular publications, I look to add a different volume to this tragic narrative in American history - one that includes the story of my own family’s search for a child we never knew existed - as well as the realization that the loving matriarch everyone thought they knew carried tragic secrets to her grave.  
 
Georgia Tann never paid for her crimes, but families all over America have been paying for decades. When Tann died in 1950, many coconspirators involved in her misdeeds hoped the story would die with her. Instead, there is a new movement where victims and victims' families are coming together to search for answers. DNA technology has given us an edge and key to unlock some of the last remaining mysteries of the tragic Tann narrative.

A Strange Discovery:

This is the story of two women: One, a rich, educated, and privileged debutant who seemed to have it all; The other, a poor, unmarried, and pregnant twenty-year-old girl from the small farm town of Stuttgart, Arkansas. In 2006, during an ancestry search, I made the startling revelation that my husband's grandmother gave birth to a secret baby in the summer of 1945. Hidden from the world for decades, this accidental discovery of a death certificate, sent shockwaves through our family and I have been searching for this child ever since. This section of my blog will delve, week by week, into the secret world Georgia Tann created, as well as the secret life Mary Helen tried desperately to leave behind. I will publish the research I have found and have yet to discover. My goal is to piece together what remains in the shadows of a story that stayed buried for seventy-five years.