Emeline's story was first recorded by documentary filmmaker David Hoffman while interviewing Nettie Mitchell, a local newspaper reporter and lifelong resident of Fayette.
The young man's parents then visited the newlyweds in Fayette and made the shocking discovery that the now adult Emeline was the teenage girl from whom they had adopted their baby boy.
She survived by raising chickens[citation needed]and growing vegetables but, years later, Emeline died alone in her tiny cottage from starvation after a harsh winter because she ran out of food.
According to Mitchell, her mother attended the service at Moose Hill church during which one of Emeline's sisters placed one hand on the cheap wooden casket, held the other up and said to those gathered "at last she has paid for her sin."
Census documents show she lived with other families as a young woman suggesting she was a pauper[citation needed], an impoverished person supported by strangers in exchange for free labor who in turn receive money from a government entity.
Although her first husband never officially divorced her, Emeline later married Leonard Bolles Gurney, on April 16, 1878[citation needed].