The Movie: "StolenBabies"

On View : Licensed to Steal : ADOPTION SCANDAL IS SUBJECT OF LIFETIME'S 'STOLEN BABIES,' WITH MARY TYLER MOORE AS GEORGIA TANN

To childless couples, Georgia Tann was a salvation. From 1924 to 1950, Tann headed the Tennessee Children's Home Society, a highly respected adoption agency. During her tenure, permanent homes were found for more than 5,000 babies. Joan Crawford, Mary Pickford and Dick Powell and June Allyson were just a few of the famous people who received their children from the home. But Tann guarded a deep, dark secret: a vast majority of these children were actually stolen from their natural parents.

Lifetime's new movie, "Stolen Babies," premiering Thursday, dramatizes this shocking true story. Lea Thompson stars in the drama as a county welfare agent who works closely with the society, only to discover the illegality in adoption procedures; Mary Tyler Moore plays Tann.

Executive producer Kim Moses' interest in Tann was sparked when she read an article about her in a newspaper. But when she contacted the welfare department, the governor's office and the public relations office of Tennessee, everyone disavowed knowledge of Tann. "I felt that was curious, since it covered such a long period of time," Moses says. "I think it is really a mar on the state of Tennessee. It is something they are not happy about, so they really don't want to make it a part of that history."

So Moses and her partners, Ian Sander and J. Moses, began doing independent research. They found a social worker in Tennessee who had taken over the home after Tann died of cancer in 1950, and was responsible for writing the current laws to protect adopted children.

"She was the first one to be suspicious of Georgia Tann because she was putting together statistics (on adoptions)," Moses says. "There was a high percentage of children in the adoption system in Tennessee from (a certain) county who had mental problems. There were repetitive adoptions. People would bring them back because of their behavior."

Though there also were a number of Tennessee families awaiting children, there were large numbers of out-of-state adoptions. In Tennessee, adoptions were free, but Tann was able to charge any amount for out-of-state adoptions.

"Why would they be adopting so many children from out of state when in Tennessee they were still waiting for children?" Sander says.

The stolen children came mainly from poor, uneducated families.

"Many of the homes they were adopted to were financially very well off," Moses says, "even though they were not from good backgrounds. There was this story where they was a little girl who was adopted out to a wealthy family, and she ate garbage because they didn't feed her. But then there were other children who did get to college."

Tann's rule endured, Sander says, because of the Tennessee political machine. She worked with Judge Camille Kelly to "legally" get the children away from their natural parents.

"When there was a judge who went up against them, he found himself absolutely exiled on the bench," Sander says. "There was a flu epidemic and 40 children died because (Tann) wouldn't give them penicillin because she thought it was too expensive. When a doctor tried to uncover that, he found himself out of a job."

No one was ever prosecuted for the illegal adoptions. Tann destroyed many of the adoption records. She died before she was brought to trial; Kelly resigned her post.

Mary Tyler Moore was drawn to the project because she felt that Tann was a fascinating character. "I wanted to play that character because I am sure she was a product of her time," says Moore, who is almost unrecognizable as the matronly Tann. "If you have a choice between raising a child in a wealthy home with little love, or a poor home with a lot of love, there is no question the children would do better in the wealthy home. That was the conventional wisdom."

Tann was the daughter of a doctor who was from the wrong side of the tracks. "She was not accepted by Tennessee society, so she used this position for power," Moore says. "She had leverage to work her way into the place she wanted to be. With Camille Kelly, they would look at somebody--a worker who was temporarily unable to support his family. They would take the children under the guise of temporarily protecting them, and then send them out for adoption. Because of the disclosure laws at the time, once that family was back on its feet and came looking for the children, they couldn't trace them. It was a heinous thing."

Thompson, who plays the idealistic social worker, says "Stolen Babies" is all about class. "It was really about the poor versus the rich," Thompson says. "'There was a heavy class system in the South--the poor white trash and the rich people. I totally see both sides of the coin, because I have really rich friends and they can't have babies and when a woman wants a baby, man, it is like an intense physical desire."

"Stolen Babies," Moore says, is an important piece not just because it shows how Tann persuaded herself that she was in the right but because it reveals "how people can convince themselves that they are right in all areas of life, when they are really doing terrible things. I am almost saying, don't be so sure of yourself, no matter what you are doing. Look very carefully at your motives and the outcome and be aware of other people's opinions before you take action."

"Stolen Babies" premieres Thursday at 9 p.m. and repeats Saturday at 6 p.m. on Lifetime.

March 21, 1993|SUSAN KING | TIMES STAFF WRITER

 
Source: articles.latimes.com

 

The Tennessee Children's Home Society Lot At Elmwood

Within Elmwood’s extensive archives T-#504 is short for Turley Lot Number 504.  Of all the lots in Elmwood this is the only one that is forever imprinted on my mind. The mention of T-#504 brings to mind anger, disbelief, shock, curiosity, and especially sadness of the most profound degree.

The Lot Book says that this area is “Reserved for the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.   For those of you not familiar with the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, this was the agency run by Memphis’s infamous Georgia Tann, also known as the “Baby Thief”.

Visit T-#504 and you will see nothing but a grassy patch of ground.  No markers.  Yet within this plot are buried 19 children who died under the supervision of Miss Tann.



The first burial was on September 17th, 1923 and this little girl’s name as registered in the Elmwood records was Maud.  The last burial, Robert, was on October 10, 1949, less than a year before the agency was formally exposed for what it was and shut down.   Eight other children also have full names listed.  It is known, however, that Ms. Tann commonly changed the names of the children so it will never be known if these are the actual birth names.  Ten of the children are only listed as Baby Estelle, Baby Billy, Baby Herbert, and so on. 

Thousands of children went through this agency and were often deceptively stolen from their legitimate parent/s and sold at a profit through Tann’s nefarious ‘adoption system’.  Hundreds of children died while under her care from neglect, abuse, and improper medical care. No one knows for sure what happened to their bodies.  One story, as told in Barbara Raymond’s book The Baby Thief,  has it that some of the bodies were disposed of through an agreement  Miss Tann had with a local mortuary to cremate the remains. It was said that she liked cremation because ‘graves left a trail’. 
T-#504 is one small, sad, visible reminder of that ‘trail’.  The children buried there still wait for a marker to tell the world who they were and what happened to them.

Source: elmwoodcemetery.org

The Hollywood Baby Snatcher:

George Beulah Tann (Georgia)

The sinister story of the woman who stole children and sold them to the stars

The baby snatcher: Georgia Tann stole children from their real families and sold them for her own profit

As she watched her baby coughing in her cot in a corner of her tiny apartment, Alma Sipple felt increasingly desperate.

A single mother in Tennessee, she could not afford medical care for ten-month-old Irma. Suddenly, a knock on the door heralded a turn in her fate: there stood a woman with close-cropped grey hair, round wireless glasses and a stern air.

She exuded authority as she explained she was the director of a local orphanage and had come to help. Alma rushed to show the lady her sickly child.

Examining the baby, the woman offered to pass her off as her own at the local hospital in order to obtain free treatment. She warned Alma not to accompany her, explaining: 'If the nurses know you're the mother, they'll charge you.'

Lifting the child from the cot, the woman turned on her heel and disappeared. Two days later, Alma was told her baby had died.

In fact, Irma had been flown to an adoptive home in Ohio. Alma would not see her daughter again for 45 years.

For far from being her saviour, the woman who had taken Irma was a baby thief.

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.

She charged fees to couples desperate to be parents

Some victims were sold as underage farm hands or domestic skivvies. Others were starved, beaten and raped. The lucky ones were sold to wealthy parents, with Hollywood stars, including Lana Turner and Joan Crawford - who adopted twins Cathy and Cynthia - lining up for babies.

Some of the children were featured in magazine articles. A number were placed with families in Britain.
So, who was Georgia Tann and how did she come to ruin so many lives?

Born in Hickory, Mississippi, in 1891, her father, George, was a high court judge and her mother, Beulah, a Southern belle. Inside their lavish house, all was not well.

Sold: Joan Crawford with her adopted daughters Cathy and Cynthia. Many other victims of Georgia were not so lucky

Tann's father was an arrogant, domineering womaniser. From an early age, it became clear Georgia was a disappointment to her strait-laced parents.

Big-boned and broad-shouldered, she wore flannel shirts and trousers: unacceptable clothing for a woman at the time. A car accident had left her with a limp.

Social work was one of the few acceptable careers for women of Tann's class, and despite having no empathy with the vulnerable, she saw it as an escape route from her staid home.

She developed her own theories on society. In eugenic language which would be echoed to infamous effect in Nazi Germany, she described wealthy people as 'of the higher type'.

She considered the poverty stricken young women left in poverty by the Depression as 'breeders', privately referring to them as 'cows'. She argued that poor people were incapable of proper parenting.
After getting a job at the Mississippi Children's Home-Finding Society, she began to translate her beliefs into action.

At the time, adoption was uncommon in the USA. Tann would change that.

At first, she simply placed orphans for adoption. But soon, she realised she could make money by charging hefty fees to couples desperate to become parents.

Mothers were falsely told their newborn had died

By 1920, exploiting the lack of regulations on adoption and her father's position as a judge, Tann began placing children she had kidnapped from poor women.

One of the first mothers she targeted was Rose Harvey. One spring morning in 1922, Tann drove her Ford Model T to a cabin in Jasper County, Mississippi.

Asleep inside was pregnant Rose, who was young, poor, widowed and suffering from diabetes. Her two-year-old son, Onyx, was playing on the back porch.

Tann lured the sturdy, black-haired, brown-eyed boy into her car. Her father signed legal papers declaring Rose to be an unfit mother and Onyx an abandoned child. He was placed with an adoptive family. Rose engaged a lawyer, but was unable to regain custody.

In 1924, Tann started work at the Tennessee Children's Home Society, where she turned part-time baby snatching into big business.

'I can still hear her steps down the hallway. She had big feet and wore black lace-up shoes,' says a former resident at the children's home.

'She always went upstairs to see the babies. There would be masses of them one day. They'd be gone the next.'

Wealthy parent: Lana Turner, pictured in the film Another Time, Another Place, was another Hollywood actress to adopt a child through Georgia

Tann acquired the protection of Memphis's corrupt and all powerful mayor, Edward Hull Crump, and eventually set up her own orphanage, at 1556 Poplar Avenue.

By then, she had met her lesbian partner, Ann Atwood Hollinsworth, who helped Tann ferry babies around the country - as far from their natural parents as possible.

Tann adopted a daughter, June, in 1922. June's daughter, Vicci, says: 'Mother said Georgia Tann was a cold fish; she gave her material things, but nothing else. I don't know why she bothered to adopt her.'

By the Thirties, Tann was charging wealthy couples up to £100,000 in today's money for babies. So, how did she arrange a steady flow of children she could sell?

In some cases, single parents would drop off their children at nursery - when they came back to collect them, they would be told they had been taken away by welfare officers.

Tann offered accommodation to children whose parents were in trouble and targeted the most beautiful infants she could find, dressing them in lace outfits to meet prospective clients.

Older children would be instructed to 'sit on that man's lap and call him daddy'.

Newborns were most in demand. Tann bribed maternity hospital nurses, who falsely told mothers their babies had died.

Irene Green remembers being told her baby was stillborn. 'But I heard him cry!' she protested. She asked to see the body, but was told it had been 'disposed of'. In fact, Georgia's workers had snatched the child.

Tann would falsify birth certificates

Mary Reed was a typical victim. In 1943, aged 18, she gave birth to a baby boy. She was barely conscious when she was presented with a 'routine paper' to sign by a woman dressed in white.
By the time Mary came round and asked for her baby, the child was in New Jersey.

She hired a lawyer but never got her child back. Tann would alter the children's records and falsify birth certificates to make them more appealing to prospective adopters.

Their mother would be described as 'the daughter of a doctor' who had fallen pregnant accidentally, while the father would be 'a medical student'.

She knocked years off the children's age, so they appeared precocious - and to stop them being traced.
Some youngsters were accused of disappointing their adoptive families. Joy Barner was told as a teenager by her father: 'I paid 500 dollars for you - I could have gotten a good hunting dog for a lot less. You come from the lowest scum on earth.'

She later found out she had been stolen in 1925 from a loving family living on a houseboat.

Many of the children were abused. Jim Lambert and his three siblings were taken from their mother by Tann in 1932.

 

Adoption remains popular in Hollywood: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have adopted three children but thankfully evil Georgia is no longer around to organise the placements

The Chicago couple he was placed with divorced and Jim's stepmother hung him up from a hook in the basement.

He and his siblings eventually traced their birth mother, only to find she had died. In her Bible, beside the names of her stolen family she had written: 'The children of a brokenhearted mother. I have no one to love me now.'

He later said: 'I feel angry, frustrated, as if I was cheated out of a whole lot of life.'

Billy Hale recalled being driven away from his mother, crying, in a limousine, with two women in black.

His loving adoptive parents repeatedly reassured him no such event had occurred.

Through his childhood, he suffered from seemingly motiveless rages. It was only many years later, when he researched his background, that he realised his memory was correct.

He tracked down his mother, Mollie, only to be told by her brother she had died of cancer eight years previously, calling out for her son at the end.

He was told: 'She looked for you all her life, Bill.'

'She was a relentless, cold-blooded demon'

By 1935, Tann had placed children in every U.S. state. A social worker who knew her says: 'She placed with no regard to whether children would be happy in their adoptive homes. She wanted to get her hands on every child she could.'

Among the most disturbing cases are the adoptions by single men of young teenagers - Bisantz Raymond suspects they were paedophiles.

Keen to make more money, Tann began running 'Georgia's Christmas Baby Ads' in the local newspaper under the headline: 'Want a real, live Christmas present?'

A brilliant publicist, she gave lectures on adoption, arguing that adopted children 'turn out better' than birth children, saying: 'Ours is a selective process. We select the child and we select the home.'
She was lauded in the national Press as 'the foremost leading light in adoption laws'.

Eleanor Roosevelt sought her counsel regarding child welfare, and President Truman invited her to his inauguration.

But by 1940, alerted by the rising infant mortality rate in the city, some people were on to Tann.

'She was a relentless, cold-blooded demon,' says a paediatrician who tried to curb her. 'She got bigger and bigger the more power she had. She was pompous and self-important, riding around in a Cadillac driven by a uniformed chauffeur. She terrorised everyone.'

By 1950, officials began a long-overdue investigation into Tann's business. State investigator Robert Taylor reported the horror of what had taken place at Tann's orphanage, saying: 'Her babies died like flies.'

Infants were kept in appalling conditions in suffocating heat. Some were sedated until they could be sold. Many were ill. Some were sexually abused - Tann preyed on young girls and a male caretaker would take little boys into the woods.

A news reporter believed he saw a body being buried in the garden.

In 1945, a bout of dysentery caused the deaths of between 40 and 50 children in less than four months.

The damage suffered at Tann's hands could never be undone

The net was closing, but Tann would evade justice. Three days before her death due to cancer, the governor of Tennessee revealed at a press conference that Tann was not the 'angel of adoption' she claimed to be.

He did not mention the grieving parents or dead babies, but focused on the illegal profits she had made while receiving state funding.

Conveniently for the corrupt politicians who had collaborated in her black market baby trade, Tann was too sick to be questioned about her crimes. She died in her four-poster bed at 4.20am on September 15, 1950.

What became of her victims? Many never saw their families again - after Tann's crimes came to light, there was no attempt to return children to their rightful homes.

They were granted rights to their birth certificates and adoption records only in 1995, after a long battle. A small number were reunited with their birth mothers, but the damage they had suffered at Tann's hands could never be undone.

Forty-five years after Tann had walked into her apartment, Alma Sipple finally found Irma, but they were unable to form a lasting relationship.

'Only someone who has lost a child this way can know how horrible it is,' says Alma. 'There's a hole in my heart that will never be filled.'

• The Baby Thief by Barbara Bisantz Raymond (Metro, £18.99). To order a copy at £17.10 (P&P free), tel: 0845 155 0720
•  
• By Zoe Brennan for the Daily Mail
  Updated: 06:10 EST, 29 January 2009 

Source: dailymail.co

Kelleygrams

Kelleygrams: Signed Edition Hardcover – January 1, 1950

by Camille McGee Kelley (Author), Photos (Illustrator), Mary Pickford (Foreword)

A collection of wisdom gathered from the courtroom of renowned Southern judge, Camille Kelley. She was implicated in the infamous "Baby for Sale" Scandal in Memphis during the 1940's with Georgia Tann, the director of The Tennessee Children's Home of Memphis, Tennessee. Judge Kelley, without due process of law, would place children with The Tennessee Children's Home, and Georgia Tann, its director, would deliver them to Los Angeles for placement with Movie Stars and wealthy Los Angeles families far away from Memphis. In 1948, Anti-Crump Governor, Gordon Browning appointed a young prominent lawyer, Bob Taylor, a descendant of two Tennessee Governors, to investigate rampant rumors of baby selling. Mr. Taylor staked out the Tennessee Children's Home, and then followed a nurse with several infants to the Memphis Airport where they both boarded a plane to Los Angeles. Mr. Taylor followed the nurse to a hotel where he witnessed the baby transfer in the lobby of a hotel. Shortly thereafter, Judge Kelley, no longer protected by political boss, E.H. Crump, was allowed to retire, and Georgia Tann died before she could be prosecuted. The foreword to this book was written by Mary Pickford. Several books, television documentaries and exposes were done on this scandal which ruined many innocent lives in the process.

Check out this website to see the book listed on Amazon.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 100 pages
• Publisher: By Author (January 1, 1950)
• ASIN: B0007F9EPU
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: Be the first to review this item
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,159,173 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Source: amazon.com

Raleigh Springs Mall Memphis TN

Front Entrance to the Raleigh Springs Mall

Raleigh Springs Mall is an enclosed shopping mall serving the city of Memphis, Tennessee, USA. It is located on the north side of Memphis, on Austin Peay Hwy. just north of Interstate 40. Opened in 1971 as one of the city's first two shopping malls (the other being Southland Mall), owned and managed by Angela Whichard, Inc., Raleigh Springs Mall originally featured about seventy stores later to be remodeled and feature a twelve-screen multiplex, with four anchor stores, formerly occupied by Sears, JCPenney, Goldsmith's and Dillard's. The theater closed in December 2011, Sears closed in April 2011, and the other three anchors closed in 2003.

 Sign for the Mall

History:

 Center Court In Front of Goldsmith's Entrance

Raleigh Springs Mall opened in 1971. Developed by the Edward J. DeBartolo corporation (now known as Simon Property Group) as one of the first two malls in the Memphis area, it featured four major anchor stores: national chains JC Penney and Sears, as well as local chains Lowenstein's (which was sold to Dillard's in 1982) and Goldsmith's. A Woolworth dime store also served as a junior anchor next to JC Penney; after the Woolworth store closed in the 1990's, it was replaced with a twelve-screen multiplex (that closed December 5, 2011).

 Center Court Of The Mall

Initially the dominant mall in the Memphis area, Raleigh Springs Mall would lose several stores over time as newer malls opened, such as Hickory Ridge Mall and Mall of Memphis. Hickory Ridge Mall, in turn, has lost most of its national tenants as well, while Mall of Memphis has been demolished; both of these malls lost most of their business to the newer Wolfchase Galleria, which opened in 1997.

  A Jewelry Store near front Entrance

By the 2000's, Raleigh Springs Mall had begun to lose many of its tenants. In early 2003, Dillard's announced that its location at Raleigh Springs Mall would be one of several stores closed that year. Goldsmith's parent company Federated Department Stores (now known as Macy's, Inc.), who was in the midst of significant corporate reorganization at the time, announced that the Goldsmith's location at Raleigh Springs would be shuttered by April of the same year. Finally, the JC Penney store (which had been downgraded to a JC Penney outlet center along with Dillard's) was closed as well, leaving Sears as the only anchor store.

 Vacant Stores

Starting in 2005, Wal-Mart began negotiations with Simon Property Group to open a Supercenter at the mall. These plans would call for the demolition of the former JC Penney space, as well as the mall's movie theater, to make way for the Supercenter. However, these plans never materialized, and Wal-Mart signaled its intentions of staying at its current location when it started renovating it in early 2010.

In January 2011, Sears confirmed that its location in the mall was to close on April 3, 2011. This left the Raleigh Springs Mall without an anchor store. 

Demolition on the former J.C. Penney's anchor store at the north end of the mall began in November 2012 due to severe vandalism and break ins. Demolition on the vacant Sears automotive store occured May 2016. Demolition of the entire mall is occurring due to the city trying to take over the mall to make way for a civic center.

 Tearing Down the J C Penny's Portion of the Mall

Crews are ripping down part of the Raleigh Springs Mall.

 Back Door to newest Theater and the Foundation of J.C. Penny's looking toward Austin Peay

Demolition began Tuesday on the old J C Penney.

People familiar with how vibrant the Raleigh Springs Mall once was say it has been on life support for quite some time. On Tuesday, the plug was pulled on at least one part of the building.

"There was nothing left but to tear it down," said Juanita Jones, Raleigh Springs Mall manager.

Crime and copper theft has been all too common inside the mall's abandoned buildings in recent years.

Mall manager Juanita Jones is passionate about ridding the Raleigh shopping center of its negative reputation.

 Closed Order Pick-up Area

Jones says the revitalization is a part of preserving those memories while creating new ones for future generations.

New stores, government offices, and a community college are all possibilities for the space. Jones says she has been meeting with city developer Robert Lipscomb and Memphis Mayor A C Wharton about rebirth.

 Closed Sears Service Center

"I'm already talking to a huge, big chain about coming in here and building their store here," said Jones.

Raleigh residents like Donald Green say any change is welcome.

"Whatever they do is going to benefit me," he said.

"This community wants this mall. They need this mall," said Jones.

 Side view of Closed Dillard's Store

Jones said the demolition of J C Penney should be complete by the end of the week. She says she is soliciting community support and anyone or any business interested can stop by the mall at any time.

Present Day:

The part of the mall that was the J C Penny's building has been demolished and all that is left of that portion of the mall is the foundation. 

 Closed Movie Theater by Demolished J.C.Penny's Building On Yale Rd. Side

All of the  anchor stores have closed as well as the newer movie theater. All that is left in operation are a few small stores that are still in operation near the front entrance of the mall.

There are a few new stores that have been added to the community of Raleigh but for the most the area around the mall most of the building that surrounded it have been razed.

 Outside Entrance To The Dillard's Store (Glass Front is covered up)

Jan. 17, 2003--The Goldsmith's store at Raleigh Springs Mall is scheduled to close in mid-April, leaving the mall with Sears as the only remaining full-scale department store.

 Mall Directory

Goldsmith's parent, Federated Department Stores Inc., announced the closure Thursday, along with plans to close 10 other stores and cut 2,000 jobs.

Federated said it expects flat sales and earnings for fiscal 2003.

Looking From the J.C. Penny's Store toward center of Mall

Last month J.C. Penney announced it was closing its catalog outlet center at the Raleigh mall on Jan. 25, 2003.

A spokesman for mall owner Simon Property Group Inc. said it's too soon to say what will become of the store, which is owned by Simon and leased to Goldsmith's.

At Front Entrance by the Restrooms

Simon Property Group also owns Oak Court Mall and the Wolfchase Galleria, both of which have Goldsmith's stores.

Not-so-rockin' Raleigh:

Hickory Ridge isn't the only longstanding mall to undergo changes. In many ways, Raleigh Springs Mall experienced many of Hickory Ridge Mall's growing pains first.

 Stores that were located near the Sear's Anchor Building

Built in 1971, Raleigh Springs Mall was at the forefront of America's mall craze. It was developed by the former Edward J. DeBartolo Corp., one of the leaders of U.S. mall design and construction.

Goldsmith's Customer Pick-up Area

"It was a bell ringer," said Gary Myers, who was the mall's general manager from 1977 to 1980. "There was only Southland and Raleigh Springs for that kind of shopping experience. It commanded lots and lots of customers."

 The Sears Customer Service Pick-up area

Myers, who now owns the Gary Myers Co., noted that many of Raleigh Springs' customers diminished over the years, drawn to the newer offerings out east. The loss of shoppers has resulted in a loss of occupancy.

"There's some small shops in there, trying to stick it out," Myers said. "They're leaking ever so slowly. They'll get to a point where it may not be worth it to keep it open. But, that hasn't happened yet.

 Sears outside Entrance

"Over the long haul, I would expect their business maybe to diminish a little bit unless there's some other traffic generator on the property."

Goldsmith's Parking and second floor entrance.

As to what traffic generators could salvage the mall, those aren't known at this time. Repeated calls to the Raleigh Springs Mall and to Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group Inc., which manages the mall, were not returned.

It all grown up and looking desolate now at the front entrance of the once beautiful Raleigh Springs Mall.

Source: weikipedia.com

Sears Crosstown Building, Memphis TN,

Sears Crosstown Building Memphis, designed by Nimmons and Company, construction started on February 21st, 1927. Opening on Aug 27th, 1927, the Sears Crosstown Building was the largest building in Memphis at the time with 650,000 square feet. At a cost of Five Million dollars the construction in 180 days, with crews operating 24 hours a day six days a week. Located at 495 North Watkins with 14 floors, and over Three thousand people attended the opening. This was Sears and Roebuck’s eighth regional distribution center. This Sears closed by the early 1990’s ending over 60 years of service to the mid-south.

The Pontotoc Trace

Located at the on the east side of Airways between Lamar and Park Ave. in Orange Mound. The following is from Paul R. Coppock’s “Mid-South Volume 4, 1979 – 1982.” 

The Chickasaws, who lived near what now is Pontotoc, MS, and hunted where Memphis is, have been acclaimed for their abilities to make war on land, but hardly anyone gives them credit for accomplishments on the river. There were four years in the era of the 1720s when the Indians closed the Mississippi to French boats. The French had colonies in Illinois and in Louisiana, with the river as the only path between them. The French trade suffered so much that they encouraged the Choctaws to attack the Chickasaw. They offered the rival tribe in Southern Mississippi bounties of a gun, a pound of powder, and two pounds of lead for each Chickasaw scalp. Holding their ground, the Chickasaw refused to meet French demands to throw out English traders, and the French were eventually forced to make peace.

Pigeon Roost Road 

Pigeon Roost Road was created by the County Court Wednesday, October 22, 1828. It was originally a trail or trace used by the Chickasaw Indians to travel from Mississippi to the river. The County Court was ordered to mark out a road in the direction of Love's settlement (a half breed Chickasaw Indian) near present Pontotoc, Mississippi where there was a creek near Holly Springs named Pigeon Roost Creek. Originally known as the Chickasaw Trace, the early settlers renamed it Pigeon Roost Road because it was the route used to travel to the Holly Springs area where thousands of passenger pigeons came to roost annually. Easy to kill they were soon extinct. In 1906 the name was changed to Lamar Ave. to honor L.Q.C. Lamar, a prominent statesman from Mississippi who was a strong proponent of reconciliation between the North and the South following the Civil War. He was appointed by Jefferson Davis as ambassador to Russia during the Civil War. After the war he served in the House and Senate, served as Secretary of the Interior in Grover Cleveland’s cabinet, and was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1888.

Leading to a large roost of the now-extinct passenger pigeon, Avenues, and on Lamar Boulevard. Before settlement days it was a dry-weather trail used by the Chickasaw Indians. It was improved into a plank road about 1855, and frequently so called.  

Byhalia Mississippi 

The town of Byhalia was founded in 1838 when C.W. Rains and Wash Poe purchased land at the intersection of Pigeon Roost Road (now Church Street) and the Collierville-Chulahoma Road (now Highway 309). Pigeon Roost Road was originally the Chickasaw Trail, a long-used Native American path followed by Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto in 1541. Pigeon Roost Road had been improved in 1835 to accommodate the removal of the Chickasaw Nation to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

Source: Shelby County Archives/ Wikipedia

Chickasaw Trail

Located at the corner of Adams and Danny Thomas. The following is from Paul R. Coppock’s “Mid-South Volume 4, 1979 – 1982.” 

The Chickasaws, who lived near what now is Pontotoc, MS, and hunted where Memphis is, have been acclaimed for their abilities to make war on land, but hardly anyone gives them credit for accomplishments on the river. There were four years in the era of the 1720s when the Indians closed the Mississippi to French boats. The French had colonies in Illinois and in Louisiana, with the river as the only path between them. The French trade suffered so much that they encouraged the Choctaws to attack the Chickasaw. They offered the rival tribe in Southern Mississippi bounties of a gun, a pound of powder, and two pounds of lead for each Chickasaw scalp. Holding their ground, the Chickasaw refused to meet French demands to throw out English traders, and the French were eventually forced to make peace.

Chickasaw Trail

Source: Shelby County Archives

The John Gaston Hospital

John Gaston Hospital, located on Madison Avenue, is pictured in November 1950. Jean Gaston was born in Aveyran, France, on Jan. 4, 1828. Born into poverty, Jean's first job was in his uncle's small restaurant in Paris. The job did nothing to lift him above poverty and eventually he went to work as a steward on a cruise line running from France to New York. During shore leave in New York Jean passed a restaurant and decided to apply for a job. The restaurant was the world-famous Delmonico's. Jean changed his name to John and apprenticed and learned the restaurant business from the inside. After a variety of jobs and adventures, Gaston settled in the South. Sometime in the late 1860s Gaston saved enough money to open a small restaurant in Memphis. He provided the best food at the best prices and quickly built up a thriving hotel and restaurant business. As he built up to a 100-room hotel with 40 servants, Gaston began to show a willingness to be good to those less fortunate. Aside from covert donations, in 1900 Gaston donated 6 acres for a city park. When Gaston died at the age of 84 he left his fortune to his second wife, Theresa. Upon her death the money was largely donated to the city for the formation of a city charity hospital. The city of Memphis added some federal funds to the bequest and built the six-story John Gaston Hospital. (The MED)

Chickasaw Heritage Park

Chickasaw Heritage Park - Delaware @ DeSoto

• 17 Acres
• Playground ball field
• Pavilion
• Prehistoric earth mounds
• Historic markers
• Scenic Mississippi River views
• 1 Outdoor basketball court
• Under "Riverfront Development Corporation" Management
• Archaeological, Mississippian culture, B.C.
• 1600's A.D. Chickasaws - moved by 1818
• Established as Desoto Park ca. 1911 National Register

In 1887, the area currently known as Chickasaw Heritage Park was part of Jackson Mounds Park, an amusement park where Memphians came for dancing, beer, light opera, band concerts, promenades, and other entertainment. The site was once the fortress of Chickasaw chief Chisca and features two ceremonial mounds built by Paleo-Indians in the 1500s. Several forts built by the French, Spanish, and Americans were located near here. The United States’ first was Fort Adams. Built too close to the river and susceptible to flood and malaria, in 1801, it was renamed and moved to just above the Indian Mounds. The new name was Fort Pickering, named after George Washington’s Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering. The fort lost its importance after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and was practically abandoned in 1806. During the Civil War, the mounds were hollowed out and used for gun emplacements and munitions storage. Though Indian bones were discovered in excavating the roadway around the park, the site’s archaeologic significance remains relatively unexplored.


Indian mound and monument where DeSoto discovered the Mississippi River, DeSoto Park, Fort Pickering, Memphis TN - Circa 1938 Photo of: Henry C Acosta