One of the key factors that contributed\nto Beauvoir\u2019s successful operations was the influence of the Tartt family. From\n1916 through 1945, with the exception of only four years, Elnathan and Helen\nTartt served as superintendent or assistant superintendent of the home. Their close\nsupervision represented a New South bureaucratic efficiency that allowed for a\nconstant level of care as well as key support from the state legislature and from\nthe governor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/beauvoirveteranproject.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Tartts-jp-779x1024.jpg\")
Beauvoir Superintendents Elnathan and Helen Tartt, and their son Ned at Beauvoir. Either Elnathan or Helen Tartt served as superintendent of Beauvoir from 1916-1943 except for one four-year term from 1932-1936. Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Beauvoir Collection.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Helen Tartt entered the role as\nassistant superintendent, to her husband Superintendent Elnathan Tartt, as\nearly as 1916 (though she did not officially receive that title until 1920). In\n1926, she accepted the governor\u2019s appointment to run the home, a decade or more\nbefore it became common for white women to lead Confederate homes. Tartt reported\nto Beauvoir\u2019s five-member all white board (which also included two women) and\ndirectly to Mississippi\u2019s governor. They shared this role until 1928, when\nElnathan Tartt resumed his role as superintendent and Helen as assistant\nsuperintendent. When political winds changed in the state in 1932, they were\nboth replaced, but four years later, Helen Tartt resumed the leadership of\nBeauvoir, and she held the position of superintendent until her death in 1943.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout her leadership of the\nhome, Helen Tartt managed large legislative appropriations and massive\nDepression-era cuts budgets with equal success. She directed the daily\noperations for as many as 250 residents and dozens of employees. She oversaw\nthe physicians and hospital staff, the purchasing of food, livestock, and\nsupplies, and managed all contract work for the property.[2]<\/a>\nHer leadership came at a time of rising opportunity for white women in\nMississippi. Women studied at institutions of higher education, entered the\nprofessional workforce, and assumed leadership roles at the state-funded\nwomen\u2019s college, in the suffrage movement, in the arts and literature.[3]<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Helen Tartt\u2019s early leadership may\nhave been made possible by her husband\u2019s success as a popular long-term\nsuperintendent, the experience she learned as assistant-superintendent to\nElnathan, and his political connections to Governor Theodore Bilbo. Still, Helen\ngained recognition throughout the Gulf South, in her own right, for her\nadvocacy of Beauvoir residents and the efficiency with which she ran the home.[4]<\/a>\nThe New Orleans Time-Picayune<\/em>\nfeatured Tartt\u2019s leadership of Beauvoir with a front-page article and photograph\nin 1926, insisting that it was a blend of her \u201cgood cheer, patience,\nhousewifely and executive abilities\u201d that \u201cwon for Mrs. Helen Tartt the only\nheadship of a state institution in Mississippi.\u201d The editor noted Elnathan\u2019s\nprominence, but concluded that the board selected Helen \u201cbecause of her eminent\nability to handle this extremely difficult job.\u201d[5]<\/a>\nThe public recognized Helen Tartt\u2019s organizational acumen, too, if only through\ntheir regular contact with her as a prominent, influential business woman. From\nthe late 1920s through the early 1940s, local papers printed frequent notices\ncalling for bids from grocers, dairy farmers, undertakers, and contractors for\nservices needed at the home, and readers were instructed to contact \u201cMrs. Helen\nTartt, Supt.\u201d with their sealed bids. These notices served as regular\nreminders, year after year, that a New South woman directed Beauvoir\u2019s\nlarge-scale and efficiently run operations.[6]<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Helen Tartt died in her leadership\nrole at Beauvoir in April 1943. Elnathan accepted the role of superintendent\nfor a short before resigning from the position later that summer.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This post is excerpted from <\/em>the\narticle by Susannah J. Ural, <\/em>\u201c\u2018Every\nComfort, Freedom and Liberty\u2019:\nA Case Study of Mississippi\u2019s Confederate Home,\u201d <\/em>The Journal of the Civil War Era<\/a> 9\n(March 2019), 55-83.<\/em><\/em> [1]<\/a> New Orleans Times-Picayune<\/em>, August 1, 1926; Biloxi Daily Herald<\/em>, April 2, 1943.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/a> Twelfth Biennial Report of the\nBoard of Directors, Jefferson Davis Beauvoir Memorial Home, 1926-1927. Beauvoir,\nSoldiers Home Reports, Folder 1, Jefferson Davis Presidential Library, Biloxi,\nMississippi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/a> Marjorie Julian Spruill, \u201cNellie\nNugent Somerville: Mississippi Reformer, Suffragist, and Politicians,\u201d Joanne\nVarner Hawks, \u201cBelle Kearney: Mississippi Gentlewoman and Slaveholder\u2019s\nDaughter,\u201d and Sarah Wilkerson-Freeman, \u201cPauline Van de Graaf Orr,\u201d in Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives<\/em>,\neds. Martha H. Swain, Elizabeth Anne Payne, Marjorie Julian Spruill (Athens:\nUniversity of Georgia Press, 2010), 72.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/a> Praise for Elnathan Tartt, Helen\nTartt, and the efficiency of the Jefferson Davis Soldiers\u2019 Home appeared in\ndozens of papers from 1916 through the 1940s. Examples of this appear in the Daily Mississippi Clarion and Standard<\/em>\n(Jackson, Mississippi), September 1, 1921; Biloxi\nDaily Herald <\/em>(Biloxi, Mississippi), July 14, 1926; Greenwood Commonwealth<\/em> (Greenwood, Mississippi), August 12, 1927; Indianola Enterprise<\/em> (Indianola,\nMississippi), September 29, 1927.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5]<\/a> New Orleans Times-Picayune<\/em>, August 1, 1926.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/beauvoirveteranproject.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Mrs-Tartt-633x1024.jpg\")
On August 1, 1926, the New Orleans Times-Picayune <\/em>featured Helen Tartt on its front-page coverage of leading white women in the region.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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