Tennessee Children's Home Society

Hi, I'm Holly. And I'm Haley. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Hi everybody.

Hello. We are currently reclining. We are reclining. It was very nice.

It's delightful. It is. We're all nice and cozy in my house. Haley popped in today.

So we're back recording. We have come several weeks out here. So I appreciate that. Yes.

But in a couple weeks, we'll probably go to your house too and mix it up. But she came in and my son had just gotten out of the bath and I covered him with a towel and he was so excited that you were at the door. And so we open up the door and my son like opens his towel and he calls her Sadie. Sadie.

And he opens up his towel to show everybody. Like a flasher. Make it as a jaybird. And I was like, we have a door open.

Close it. The neighbors are out there. The neighbors. Oh my gosh.

The neighbors thing. That this little boy is naked. What do you think? Right in the doorway.

He loves to run around naked. Well, he, I had to bring some very belated birthday gifts over and it was a struggle to convince him to put clothes on before we did birthday gifts. I was like, listen, you're going to have to be clothed before we birthday gifts. Open gifts.

Yes. Yes. So he was like, I'm so excited. And he kept singing happy birthday to me.

So it was really, he's at that age where it's all about him. So it's cool. You know that young age, but what are we doing while he's sleeping? Not just recording the podcast.

We're eating his gummy bears. Love gummy bears. I do too. And I have such an addiction to them.

I've like got to stop because it's horrible, but they're so like, I love the chewiness of them. They're so good. My son and I will usually like in the car and he'll say, I need the bag. And I was like, you're not getting this whole bag.

I'm not. Oh, right. So we probably should transition into a story. We should.

Okay. Let's do that. Let's go ahead. Go ahead.

Now we're everybody who's, everybody who's listening is like, man, I really want to come in. You should. They're great. So we're talking about the Tennessee Children's Home Society today.

Okay. So that's wholesome. It's not. No.

Okay. No, there's a lot of debauchery going. It sounds wholesome. That's awesome.

Home society, like, lovely. Like helping these children. That's not amazing. What are they doing?

Well, you'll see. So obviously we're starting our story off in Tennessee, the state that we go to time and time again for debauchery. Exactly. So it is 1897 where we start our story.

We're in Tennessee in a non-profit organization for orphans, as we call them back in the day, was opened with state funds. Okay. So, okay, great. We're supporting our children in care.

The agency starts off small, but as the years go on, the need for expansion continues to grow because more children are either being abandoned. And see, you've got to think about this period of time. It's not the structure of the foster care system that we know today. So it wasn't that CPS was going in and saying, oh, boy, this is unsafe.

We need to remove these children for their own safety and well-being. No. A lot of times, parents were dying of different types of diseases. So children, it starts in 1897.

So a lot of kids are being abandoned and they're the wagon trains and all those things that you hear about, children just being sent off West because they have no one to care for them. That was very common. So they were essentially orphans and they started this organization to be able to house a lot of these children with the hope of them being adopted. So by 1913, the state and other community organizations provided the non-profit with more money to do, quote unquote, God's work, taking care of our kids and the mission of the orphanage because obviously all organizations must have a mission statement.

Mission statement and obviously several other statements. Oh, yes. Was to quote unquote, support, maintain and care for the welfare of children under the age of seven years admitted to its custody. Dang, that's young.

That's super young. So what happens in 7? We just set them out and say, get a little money? We hope they find employment.

You're 8 now. How labor laws are applied to not a thing. Very smart. I don't understand if maybe there was something else for children who are older, but this organization really tailored to younger children.

So zero to 7. Well, maybe they had a pretty high success rate of adopting out. I mean, even now from what I understand, the younger, 10, so we want to comment, which is so unfortunate. Teens are awesome.

Yes, they are. Yes, they're cool. Yes, adopt them if they want to be adopted. You know, support them.

Yes. Get guardianship. Anyway, so they were very picky about the age range of the children they served and only seemed to want the younger kids, obviously, in the scenario. But because the orphanage was receiving state dollars, they were also required to follow state regulatory standards as any agency has to.

So, Haley, if you're curious how much money the orphanage was receiving from the state, I'm going to fill you in. I knew that was right what you were thinking. Mid bite of gummy bear. So, they were getting $75 per child, per year, which you got to think, it's 1800.

That's a lot of money. It is. With a maximum of $5,000 allocated for the program. So, like 5,000 was where we hit.

So, we couldn't have more children than the 5,000 would allow. So, if you do the math and you take, you divide 75 by 5,000, that equals 66 children in the orphanage basically for a year. Any additional children who were placed there had to be covered at the same rate. So, had to get the $75 a year, but this was provided by the county.

So, other money has to step in, which is actually still a common thing. Yeah, that's not a common thing. Yeah, right. So, I don't know if you all know how this works, but county dollars are actually harder to come by than state dollars.

Absolutely. Not allocated the same. Exactly. So, the orphanage had to show that there was a need and they had to show that there were space for additional children.

Like, there are beds. You know, we can do this. And obviously, the county wasn't going to pay to have children in a crowded environment. Like, they want to make sure all was on the up and up.

The children also had to have a physical stating that they were in good health upon admission. And the children also could not be removed from the orphanage unless adopted or in their best interest to move elsewhere, which had to be approved by not only the agency, but also the state. Well, I feel like that's still pretty common. It still is very common to understand.

The way foster care works, I mean, from my recent working in it, like, that feels right. Yeah. Yeah. Now I'm eating the gummy bear.

Nice. You think I'm here? Yeah. So, like, I don't think the rules have changed as much.

I think it's like there's still any type of move a child would have even now has to be obviously in the best interest of the child. Right. And approved by their case worker, whatever has custody of them. Pretty much everybody has to be on board.

I mean, even in the school system, you do what's called a bid meeting, a best interest determination, which, you know, we figure out should the child stay, you know, within the school system, therapists are there, teachers are there. Like, so many people are a part of these things. Anyway. All for the best interest of the child.

Of the child, exactly. So, I was surprised to learn that every child in the orphanage had to be reported to the state controller. Okay. So, in this, you know, like kind of like a head count, this person is coming in.

So, this state controller was really over accounting, records, finances. So, such things as the child's name, age, race, sex was interd upon admission to the record keeper. Okay. And by 1938, there are now two branches of the Tennessee Children's Home.

So, it has expanded. You've got one that's in Nashville and the other is in Memphis. So, two very large cities, they're running these orphanages. So, our story really now is going to focus more on the one in Memphis.

Okay. The orphanage was located on Poplar Street in an old mansion. I mean, not too shabby for an orphanage. But all honestly, I can really picture here is like little orphanage.

Same. Like, my thought is like, run down old buildings, sing in hard knock life with a mother bucket. But apparently that wasn't the case. In this case, it was mansion.

Good case. If I was an orphan, I would be like, mansion. Yeah. And they would be like, here's your bucket.

If you had to choose, I mean, where you landed. Hello, please. I don't know why I'm English. And I'm all over twist.

I'm like, please, I'd be locked to be in the mansion. Or whatever. Place that. I need more.

Some bread. There was, however, even though there were no mansion, there was a Mrs. Hanigan. Really?

Oh, yes. Always is. Her name was actually Georgia Tan. And she was very popular in Memphis social scenes.

She used her community connections to build support for the organization. She was friends with Memphis elite, including doctors, nurses, lawyers, and judges. So, as we move along in the story, you're going to see how these friendships helped Georgia achieve her goals in other ways. The home society was supported by the Child Welfare League of America.

And this was an organization that provided support to agencies that served children and families in the foster care system. And in 1941, the Child Welfare League actually decided to drop ties with the home society due to placement paperwork being destroyed after the children came into the home. So, you know, they're supposed to report to the controller. We lost our intake packet.

We lost all our copies of everything. What children? We did not put them in the binder. Like we should have.

File it in the EHR. We didn't get that input into the system. Got it. But yet, when we came to visit and we did a head count, they were like 70 children.

But wait a minute, our state controller says, oh, you have our 66. How is this possible? Why do you not have 70? Where do they think other four children come from?

Yeah. Who are they? Are they siblings? What's going on?

Where do they belong? Exactly. And that's exactly what the Child Welfare League said. Who are these kids?

Yeah. So, they were just burning important documents, apparently, or just not reporting at all. Not great. Yeah.

And they were also getting rid of any documentation on children who were being adopted. So, you're adopted and we're just like, we now keep, there's no seven-year rule where we keep like, I think education records are seven years. Um, the others might be longer. Metaphor records might be like 10 years.

And still not something crazy. Um, so none of those rules were in place. Nothing is applying here. Yeah.

We don't have to keep any of that because what adoption? Oh, why would we need to? What are we talking about? I don't know what that happened.

But this Child was never here. I don't know what you mean. So, Georgia Tan got all defensive. And she argued that adoptions were protected by privacy laws and that she and her staff are merely trying to uphold the law.

She's so foolish. Okay. So, then you just put them in a locked filing cabinet. Exactly.

And mark confidential on them. Exactly. But instead, um, she was like, I don't know what you're talking about. It just brought back some memories for me of having to write confidential on folders.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Hip-a.

Hip-a. Hip-a. There's no hip-a in the 30s. Exactly.

There is no HIP-a. And but the good thing is this state didn't fall for her BS and actually chose not to realize in the agency. Okay. So, if you are not getting state support, that means that you are not getting state dollars.

Right. So, you have to be privately fined. All of this. Exactly.

She was now operating her business without a license. So, she was dependent upon the community for resources. Which means that the situation is going to rapidly deteriorate. Exactly.

So, she was always out, basically, begging for money, talking about, oh, they poor, parrotless children. And one would think like, oh crap, this is going downhill fast. She's probably losing her shirt and all of this. This is not going well.

Yeah. Like, we're probably not taking in anymore kids because we don't have like the money to feed all of them. Like all of them. Educate them.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Ironically, though, Georgia herself was always dressed well and rode in a fancy Packard glumisine and kind of kept out that society.

So, gee, Haley. I wonder where all those donations were going if the children weren't living in luxury, but she was. Can we imagine? Hmm.

Interesting. Well, amid the 1940s, questions began to build about the whole operation. And it's, Board of Trustees was like, shut down. Yeah.

So, by the 1950s, families that had used the society to adopt children along with those who had lost their children while the society had custody of them, finally gained notoriety and attention of state authorities who went in and investigated. Good. Want to know what they found out? Bad things, I'm sure.

It was revealed that Georgia Tan had arranged for not hundreds, but thousands of adoptions under questionable means. What? Investigators discovered that the society was a front for a black market adoption ring. So, they're really tracking?

Yep. Human trafficking. Oh, my God. By Georgia Tan.

But Georgia Tan. They also found record irregularities and secret bank accounts. In some cases, they found out that Georgia Tan had skimmed as much as 80 to 90 percent of the adoption fees with children who were placed out of state. What?

Yep. 80 to 90 percent. 80 to 90 percent. Yes.

And, okay. Yes. Sorry. That's why she was living such a highlight.

That's why it didn't matter that the state took weight funding. It's fine. We don't need a license. My God.

They also found out that Judge Camille Kelly, whom she had been working closely with, had railroaded through hundreds of adoptions without following state laws. So, just signing off on stuff. Cool. Judge Kelly also received payments from Georgia Tan for her help.

So, it was all this like back Ellie kind of thing. Like, I'll give you a little cut. So, if you're thinking, man, they're bringing her in. They're bringing Georgia Tan in.

They're going to take her down. Yeah. She's going down. She died in the fall of 1950 before she could be prosecuted.

Yes. Okay. And before they could take down Judge Kelly, Judge Kelly announced that same year that she would retire from the bench and was never prosecuted for her role in this scandal. She died five years later.

Oh, that's not good. No. It's like, what? Why are we letting these people get away with this?

Yeah. Like, literal human trafficking. Absolutely. And it's like, well.

And I'm sure like, the ones that weren't just like dropped off. Like, I'm sure they were being taken from like, poor families. Yep. That really, well, it's one less mouth to feed.

Yep. And it's devastating. Absolutely. Or like from minority families.

Well, and the children actually who had been there under a temporary custody in the children's home had just suddenly disappeared. Like, they weren't accounted for anymore. And so parents who thought their children were temporarily there until maybe they got a good housing situation or things changed financially for whatever the cause was. They never got their children back.

Their children were adopted out to rich families. And Georgia Tan was taking the money for it. And these birth parents were left going, where's my kid? And Georgia Tan couldn't answer.

So these birth parents are being literally like, I mean, having their children kidnapped and sold. And then, but then like, also you have these adoptive families who probably like got into it, like, because they wanted a child. Yep. Are now faced with the realization of, oh, crap.

We're part of this that we're part of this, like the trauma, which we're not super trauma informed in the 30s or whatever year this is. But like, this child has loving parents. We didn't like rescue a child or provide a home to a child that did not have one. We literally got to them, stole them pretty much.

And most likely Georgia Tan was telling these birth parents like, you know, it's better that they're with us because you're just not a good fit. Anyway, you're never gonna get your life together. Yeah, they don't need you. Yeah.

Mm hmm. And then telling his adopted parents like, oh, their parents died in a tragic fire. I guarantee you, like sob story. That's why they came to me.

And I saved them. I saved them. And now in turn, you get to save the children. Well, it gets a little worse.

Oh, no. So it was discovered. Remember how I told you that Georgia was really close with doctors and nurses and everything? Well, because she was so close with some doctors, she had a connection to the home of unwed mothers.

So she actually would take the newborns from their mothers under the pretext that she would be providing them with hospital care and would tell the mothers that the children had died and their bodies had been buried immediately. So they wouldn't have to worry about it. Oh my God. So these like teen moms or young moms give birth on earth.

I'm not told like, hey, your kid needs like hospital level care. We were covered here. You recover. We'll take care of it.

And then like we unite you once the baby is well and you're well. And then, whoops, they died. Sorry, they died. But she's actually adopting them out.

But actually they're now living with another family. Isn't that messed up? That's sick. Super sick.

That's bad. So I want to give some context around this so it makes a little sense. This time period, when women were giving birth, they would get to the point of pushing the baby out and they were given ether to knock them out. So upon the baby's birth, they weren't awake.

So really, you could have told them anything. Oh, the baby was born sick or with a deformity. It didn't make it. And so mothers would believe this because they weren't alert.

You know, it wasn't like the baby was put on your chest and you knew, oh, I saw the baby breathe. The baby's crying. They totally got to like, so like legs and the stirrups, babies like what? Pushing, pushing, pushing, crowning.

We knock it out. We just get to get around here. Right at the end, we're going to eat through you and knock you out and they use forceps and they, yes. And yes.

So instead of having you naturally push because you're out, they use forceps to pull out the baby. This was very common. That's terrifying. Yes.

And how do you see the stirrups? How many injuries did that call? Oh, a lot. It's a baby.

And like, because I'm trying to grab it by the head and get it out. So you put them on each side and actually mess up like shoulders and arms and that kind of thing because you put them on each side of the baby and then you pull out. I don't know. Yeah.

Which is where my mind was going. I'm like, oh, no, that's because I can go around sometimes. With each contraction, your body will actually naturally start to push the baby out. So that's where they're using the forceps to just kind of anchor it and continue to get the baby out.

But anyway, going back, a lot of these mothers in the strike period, you wouldn't know. Oh my God. I hate all of these. Right.

So uncomfortable. So Georgia Tan and the Tennessee Children's Home Society scandal resulted in adoption reform laws. Oh my God. And adults who came forward with evidence that Tan handled the adoption of these children that they ended up adopting.

So the adopted parents, they gave open access to any kind of documentation they had as related because they wanted to show like, I'm not guilty of this. Like, she do does. Yeah, we didn't know. Yeah.

And how could you know? Like, how would you know? You wouldn't know. You would just think, oh, this woman's doing God's work, you know, and you want a child.

And so you're paying whatever is asked. And she's, you know, using that money, not for good, but for evil. So the Tennessee Home Society was closed in 1950. And just to be clear, this should not be confused with Tennessee Children's Home, which is an accredited Tennessee run organization.

So you know that those are two different things. Don't come at them, please. In 1991, 60 Minutes actually reported on the scandal and the efforts of adoptees to try and find their birth parents. That's wild.

Yes. And so parents were currently seeking their grown children. So the report also reinvigorated efforts to open adoption records by both birth mothers and adoptees so that more folks could find their family. And you know, I was thinking about this now, I'm sure being able to do genetic testing has helped families with DNA find each other.

So well-known personalities associated with Georgia Tan include people like actresses Joan Crawford, whose twin daughters Kathy and Cynthia were adopted through the agency. June Allison and her husband Dick Powell, who adopted a child from Tan. Very famous actors. Professional wrestler Rick Flair reported in his autobiography that he was a victim of the society, having been illegally removed from his birth mother.

Oh my God. And he has a chapter in his book called Black Market Baby. Isn't that crazy? That's wild.

And then auto racer Jean Topia, I don't know who that is, has son stolen by the agency. Isn't that crazy? Yes, it's crazy. But there is a memorial to the victims.

Oh, okay. So over the decades, 19 of the children who died while they were at the Tennessee home under the care of Georgia Tan, probably not fed as they should be and all the things. So they were buried in a 14 by 13 foot lot at the historic Elwood Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee, but they didn't even have headstones. So Tan had bought the lot around 1923 and recorded the children there by their first names only.

So it was like Baby Estelle, Baby John, and so on. In 2015, the cemetery raised $13,000 to erect a monument to those babies' memories. And it reads in part, in memory of the 19 children who finally rest here unmarked if not unknown, and of all the hundreds who died under the cold hard hand of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Their final resting place is unknown.

Their final piece is a blessing. The hard lesson of their fate changed adoption procedure and law nationwide. It's a lot to write on a stone, but hey, important. So there's also a memorial at Spring Hill Cemetery in Madison, Tennessee.

And there are 22 plots that was purchased there in the early 1900s. However, only one child was ever buried there. So, and that took place around 1914. But yeah, so the scandal was a part of some made-for-TV movies.

I remember these movies as watching as a kid. So there was one called Missing Children and Stolen Babies. And then there was a non-fiction book called The Baby Thief, The Untold Story of Georgia Tan, The Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Biance Raymond. And then there's No Mama, I Didn't Die, My Life Story is a Stolen Baby, which is Debrault Wylers published memoir about having been stolen from her birth mother and then adopted out.

Yeah, and she actually didn't know until she was in her 70s that she'd stolen. Her 70s? Her 70s? Yep.

Oh my god. Isn't that crazy? So anyway, and the scandal was also subject to a novel called Before We Were Years by Lisa Wincate. Isn't that crazy?

So this woman, in order to get her wealth and keep her society going, she was willing to steal babies, cause significant drama to everybody, and you know, ultimately died a guilty woman. So yes, she wasn't his hand again. To the extreme, yeah. That's crazy, crazy, crazy.

More than hard enough, life. Yeah. Yeah. You live right here.

You'd be good at war, Penany. Thank you. You're welcome. I did.

We did a dance. We did a dance to the battle orphans one time. No, like my, that was our show routine was Annie. I was not a war, Penany.

I just was the regular orphan. It was a good time. And please, no, we don't regard children and care and start singing hard at life, please. And nowadays, you know, it's from my understanding, it is so common now to have, you know, foster care that is home based with foster parents versus.

We're getting away from the group settings. Yes, that's more and more. And even homes with larger capacity to have children, you know, to keep siblings out together and all those things. But like making it as normal of an experience as possible.

And you know, people do adopt through foster care, but it's all illegal, you know, right, there's a lot of, that's like a year plus multiple year long process. It's a court process of terminating rights and going for other things. Looking for any other family. Yeah, exactly.

Kind of. You look good. How much are you going to pay me? A million dollars.

I mean, like, it still does happen. Yeah, it does. Like private adoptions. A little sketchy.

I was actually listening a quick plug, but to a date line episode of this woman who was pregnant and through this website, she found this family that really went to a doctor baby and and turned out that it was a dupe. She'd never pregnant. Yeah. And she got tons of money from them.

She would say things like, I just don't have money to pay the rent or I just, you know, and keep giving your money. Because they were desperate for a child. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

But then like also like the private agencies that take advantage of like poor mothers. Honestly, if you think about it, private adoptions are, you know, like started at like 25 grand. Right. And I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, when you work, you shouldn't be able to support yourself and pay your workers, but that seems excessive.

That's a lot. Yeah, like, that's crazy to me. That's crazy. There's a lot of really cool podcasts and also just like on TikTok, if you're on the TikTok.

I've somehow forgotten into like, I follow and like to listen to former kids that were in foster care and also like kids who were like even adopted internationally and like hearing their stories and like the trauma piece that goes along with that and like, but the option is trauma. Yeah. Like it is. It can be, but like it can be a beautiful and wonderful thing when it's done correctly, but it can also be like really tragic and awful when it's done like how the story was.

Unfortunately, this will happen today, which is really scary. That's really scary. Yeah. So that's my story.

That's that. I know, right. So Georgia, tan horrible one. Sketchy.

Sketchy woman. Yes. Sketchy lady. In a mansion.

In a mansion with children. Yeah. Okay. So if, I don't know, I'd be neat if we had a listener who was out there who was like, I was one of the, yeah.

If you were like, where is somebody who was? Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of, I mean, you know, bring that up if you want to or take care of yourself because that's like a lot.

It is a lot. But feel free to contact us. Yeah. Email us.

You can do that at Mount Mysteries.appleatchin.gmail.com. Find us on Facebook. Mount Mysteries. Tales from Appalachia.

Find us on our Instagram. Mount Mysteries.appleatchin.com. And you can find us on Patreon for some additional content at patreon.com.com. That's it.

Awesome. That's it. Well, I'm going to give a shout out to Porter's Lake Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia.

Yeah. Nova Scotia is where the Titanic sunk. It's like really? Yes.

Huh. They were very close to New York. Interesting. When they sunk.

Where I thought Nova Scotia was, but it wasn't there. Came to death. Yeah. I was thinking the other side though.

No. That's like Vancouver. I was in the Vancouver area. Oh, no.

No. Okay. Oh. It's okay.

Thank you so much. I don't know. My Canadian geography. Remember our last story where I talked about the individual was trying to get into Seattle and he was coming from BC?

There you go. So think about where Seattle is. Mm-hmm. But then contact the United States.

Right. That's not what I was going to tell. Yeah. I got that now.

But like, that would not have helped me. You're a geography's heart. And so I love geography. Like I'm much better at like Europe, Africa and Asia than I am.

Like, South America. Yeah. Central America. But there's so many, you know, little countries in South America.

So many. I used to be decent at that part of the world. I just haven't traveled to that part of the world. Where I've been all over Europe and I've been in many planes.

Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry, Europe. Sorry, Europe. Oh my gosh.

I'm back. Oh my gosh. I'm both your lord. Please.

We'll see. The minute we'll be back. She won't even make it through customs. So she's going to get flagged.

I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm certain of it.

All right, y'all. Well, you have a wonderful week and we'll see you next week. See y'all. Bye.