TN - Georgia Tann Adoption Ring 1920's - 40's

Jewels53

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This has to be the most horrific crime against children I have ever seen. I just watched a show on the ID channel about this story. I looked it up and here is the story in short.

For 30 years, Georgia Tann made millions selling children. A network of scouts, corrupt judges and politicians helped her steal babies. She also targeted youngsters on their way home from school, promising them ice cream to tempt them away from their homes.
Legal papers would be signed saying they were abandoned - most would never see their families again.
Now, her story has been revealed in a new book. After painstakingly contacting her surviving victims and a forensic search through the archives, Barbara Bisantz Raymond calculates that Tann sold more than 5,000 children - and killed scores through neglect.
During the time she ran her 'business', the infant mortality rate in Memphis was the highest in the country.
Tann molested some of the girls in her care and placed children with paedophiles.

RSBM


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...-stole-children-sold-stars.html#ixzz2f0BBkAnX
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Mods if this is not the correct place for this Please move!
 
I had never heard of her -- very interesting report. How horrible!
 
Ive been on this story since I saw it on unsolved mysteries long ago. There is a famous wrestler by the name of Rick Flair that was one of these children and found out he was adopted when he was an adult. He found out his real name, but I dont think he has tracked down his birth family.
 
Wow, this is just horrendous. Hard to believe this happened in our country, of course, though I do believe it. Just think of how many innocent lives were ruined. So sad nothing was done about, and it was allowed to continue. What an evil, horrible person she is. MOO. Thanks, Katt
 
There's a podcast on YT from TCB about this case.
This woman and her cohorts were evil personified ; unfortunately with the passing of time many of the participants are deceased or too old to prosecute.
Unbelievable.

I had only heard a little about Georgia Tann, and didn't know the extent of her operation, or how cruel they were to those kids.
I realize folks adopted kids from her from all around the country, but I was curious to know if she got all the kids from Tennessee, or if she had a network of cohorts working to obtain babies and children from other states.
 
My step-father is a Georgia Tann baby. I have just begun our ancestry journey, we have NOT progressed to genetics yet, he had been reluctant in years past, but now is an older widow and may be more open to finding whatever there is to find... adoptive birth certificate says early March 1946, earliest photos we have are mid-July 1946, he was likely stolen during that period. Wish me luck!
 
My step-father is a Georgia Tann baby. I have just begun our ancestry journey, we have NOT progressed to genetics yet, he had been reluctant in years past, but now is an older widow and may be more open to finding whatever there is to find... adoptive birth certificate says early March 1946, earliest photos we have are mid-July 1946, he was likely stolen during that period. Wish me luck!

Your step-dad (and all the young victims) do have family, sibs, half-sibs, cousins. Your work may fill gaps for more than one family.

I hope your stepfather grew up with a family who cared for him well.

Best wishes for your search!
 
Wishing you good luck.
My step-father is a Georgia Tann baby. I have just begun our ancestry journey, we have NOT progressed to genetics yet, he had been reluctant in years past, but now is an older widow and may be more open to finding whatever there is to find... adoptive birth certificate says early March 1946, earliest photos we have are mid-July 1946, he was likely stolen during that period. Wish me luck!
 
I knew about Georgia Tann stealing newborns (which was not as hard to do back in the days of twilight sleep; if a woman was unmarried and/or low-income, or Tann thought she was, she would, upon regaining consciousness, be told that the baby had died) but not that she had kidnapped older children! This story is way more despicable than I suspected!

ISTR, separate from "Mommie Dearest", that Joan Crawford was rejected by every legitimate adoption agency she contacted, and resorted to a baby seller for her children.
 
Horrendous story...A must read for those who don't know about it.

For 20 years, a Tennessee baby thief kidnapped more than 5,000 children from the streets, hospitals, and shanty towns of Memphis. Now, 70 years later, survivors of her 'house of horrors' are confronting the past.

Part of it.

Tann was calculated in her approach and targeted the rich and famous, who paid premium prices for their adopted children. Actors, authors, and entertainers, including Dick Powell and June Allyson, Lana Turner, Pearl S. Buck, Smiley Burnette, and New York Gov. Herbert Lehman, all adopted Tann babies. In 1947, Joan Crawford adopted twins, Cathy and Cindy, from Tann.

Tann's extensive child-trafficking operation required connections, and she quickly linked up with E.H. "Boss" Crump, who ran a powerful Tennessee political machine. Crump offered Tann protections in exchange for kickbacks.

Tann was also in cahoots with a local judge who helped procure children, specifically from impoverished single or widowed mothers. One of her most high profile coconspirators was Judge Camille Kelley, who presided over the juvenile court in Shelby County, Tennessee, for 30 years.

The report also detailed how children were then spirited away from the Home Society in the middle of the night to avoid detection by authorities who weren't in the know or others who might ask too many questions. Her "nurses" had regular circuits to New York and California, though she shipped to all US states and Great Britain.
 
The Crawford "twins" were not twins at all, or even sisters or cousins, but they were a few months apart in age and raised as twins.

From what I've read of Pearl S. Buck, I couldn't imagine her adopting from an entity like this, unless she just didn't know, or Tann had a child considered unadoptable due to race or disability, and Buck took in and raised the child rather than leave it in an orphanage.
 
My step-father is a Georgia Tann baby. I have just begun our ancestry journey, we have NOT progressed to genetics yet, he had been reluctant in years past, but now is an older widow and may be more open to finding whatever there is to find... adoptive birth certificate says early March 1946, earliest photos we have are mid-July 1946, he was likely stolen during that period. Wish me luck!
Best of luck.
Please encourage him to do genetic genealogy.
Here's why:
Before she met my grandfather, my grandmother had a baby out of wedlock sometime in the early 40s. She had been engaged, but when her fiance found out she was pregnant, he left her. Though taboo, she was determined to raise him alone, but, sadly, he died in his sleep at 3 days old in the hospital. We don't know when or where he was born. We don't know if she saw him deceased and had a burial for him, or if the hospital staff told her he had died and she just took their word for it. We haven't been able to find birth or death certificates for him, and they weren't among my grandmother's things after she died, which wasn't like her. She kept everything.
I've often suspected she gave the baby up for adoption, or possibly, she was lied to about his death, and he was sold. And, of course, he could have passed and my grandmother simply lost his paperwork. But, if he were adopted, the only way we'll ever know is through genetic genealogy. In the meantime, I'm still searching for his birth/death records.
 

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