Jean Paton at an American Adoption Congress Protest
In this photo, Jean Paton is in the background at this 1989 protest by the American Adoption Congress (AAC), an organization she helped found in 1979. The ACC declared the first week in August of 1989 as “National Open Records Week,” which would be celebrated by a march on Washington, D.C. beginning at the Statue of Liberty in New York City during that last week of July and ending in the nation’s capital during the first week of August. The woman with the sign “Birthmothers Care Forever” is Marilyn Burson, a birth mother (deceased). The woman with the sign “Adoptee Rights Are Human Rights” is Molly Johnson, adopted adult and executor of the Jean Paton Papers. The woman with the sign “Cut the Tape Break the Seal” is Judy Taylor, birth mother. The woman behind her, with the partial sign saying “Free,” might be Joyce Barr, an adoptee from NYC. The woman holding the “American Adoption Congress” sign is Sharon Bell. And the woman holding the sign “Equal Rights for Triad Members” is Nancy Horgan. I am indebted to both Molly Johnson and Joe Soll for identifying the protest and the participants.
Jean Pation’s New Adoptive Home
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.
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Jean Paton and her second adoptive family
This is a photo of Jean Paton, age 2½ or 3, with her second adoptive father, Dr. Thomas Paton and her seven-year-old foster sister, Virginia. Jean was adopted twice. The first time, she was adopted on May 10, 1909, by Harry and Millie Dean, a lower-middle class couple who also lived in Detroit. The Deans renamed the baby Madeline Viola Dean. Baby Madeline lived with the Deans for only two years. At age 44, Harry Dean, a house painter, contracted cancer of the liver and died on May 6, 1911. (I have not been able to locate any photos of the Deans). The last six months that Madeline lived under the Deans’ roof were filled with illness and the smell of death. Some seventy years later, Paton believed that her first adoptive father’s death had left her with “an undying and fierce hatred of the spectacle of human suffering.” Impoverished by her husband’s death, Millie Dean was unable to support Madeline. She returned the child to the Children’s Home Society of Michigan, which again placed Madeline in a foster home. Madeline stayed in that foster home for 7½ months. Then on December 11, 1911, Dr. Thomas and Mary M. Paton of Ypsilanti, Michigan, adopted Madeline and renamed her Jean Madeline Paton.
Jean Paton interviewed by E. Wayne Carp in Harrison AR, 1998
In June 1998, I spent a week interviewing Jean in her home in Harrison, AR. I had just published my book, Family Matters: Secrecy and Openness in the History of Adoption, and thought I knew something about the adoption reform movement. But after talking with Jean, I realized that I would have to rethink and rewrite much of that history because I had missed how important she had been to its creation and growth. During that week, we hit it off and had quite a meeting of the minds. At age 90, Jean’s mind was sharp as a tack and her memory was excellent. She had a great sense of humor but also was extremely serious when it came to issues that mattered to her. She got angry at hearing the name of Bill Pierce and teared up when talking about her mother. I felt honored that she chose me to write her biography, and fortunate that she left me with the historian’s gold mine of her papers. As you can see, I am still at it.
Jean Paton in 1939: student and social worker
In 1939, Jean applied and was accepted as a student at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work. Along with course work, Penn’s School of Social Work prepared its future social workers with extensive training in fieldwork. For the first two years of graduate study, Jean traveled by train to Richmond to work as a caseworker with foster children waiting for placement in adoptive homes at the Virginia Children’s Home Society.
Jean Paton’s aunt, Viola
In 1955, Paton hired a private investigator for $35.00 to find her mother. The investigator found her mother’s sister, Viola, who was still living at the old family address in Michigan, with her husband and a child. Paton then went off to Michigan on one of her fieldtrips to interview adopted adults but also to initiate the reunion with her first mother. Jean met Viola, who ventured to act as an intermediary, contact Jean’s mother through a neighbor’s phone, and get back to her the following day. The rest is history, as they say. See next photo.
Jean Paton’s reunion with her first mother
Jean Paton, age 47 met her first mother, Emma Steiner, nee, Cutting age 69, on a spring-like day in early March 1955. Paton’s reunion with her mother, which she described as a “strange and potent experience,” made a deep and lasting impression on her. To one correspondent, she wrote, it was “wonderful beneath knowing,” to find one’s mother; as there was “no more specters, no more fantastic living, no more paralysis of will for avoiding the deepest desire of nature.” Paton also universalized her reunion with her mother, making it the basis for advice she gave to correspondents who sought her help. This photo was probably taken in Florida, where Emma moved in retirement with her husband Eddie Steiner, some years after the reunion. (Yes, Emma was short: she was only 4’9″).
June and Jean at home in Cedaredge, CO
A rare photo of June Schwantes (lower left) and Jean Paton together at home together. There is no identification on the back of the photo.
June Schwantes at home in Harrison, AR
This is a photo of June Schwantes, who was Jean’s life companion for some 40-odd years. Jean met June in Hasty, Arkansas, which was June’s hometown. They lived together for a year in 1965 before moving to Memphis, and then eventually to Cedaredge, Colorado. June was a evangelical Christian, a RN, who became Director of Nursing at the Medical School of the University of Tennessee. She continued her nursing career for the next two decades before retiring in 1985. When I interviewed June in Harrison, Arkansas, last May, she got around slowly with a walker but was articulate, devote, cogent, with a good sense of humor. June had remarkable recall of events of the past, but like most elderly people had difficulty remembering things that happened yesterday.
The Biography of Jean Paton 