Jean thrived in her second adoptive home, which was located in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a small city of 15,000 people, thirty miles west of Detroit.  The Patons were prosperous and much better off than her first adoptive family, the Deans.  They lived in a large, imposing, three-story house, located on 122 Normal Street and had just purchased a new EMF automobile for Dr. Paton, a general practitioner, to conduct his house calls over the muddy and rutted roads in and out of Ypsilanti.

For those of you who are serious history nuts, car buffs, or just plain curious: the letters “EMF” stand for the initials of the last names of Barney Everitt, Bill Metzger, and Walter Flanders, who founded the E-M-F-Company in 1908.  Within three years the company was “the largest employer in Detroit and was producing more cars than any other company in the United States other than Ford.”  The primary reason that the name of the car is unknown today is because the Studebaker Brothers purchased the entire company in 1910.