Emma Lee Garner was born on the Fourth of July in 1883 in Tuscaloosa County, She lived with her maternal grandmother, Amanda Jane Pilkinton Caraway, who owned a boarding house in Tuscaloosa. Alabama. At the age of fourteen, Emma was helping her grandmother in the boarding house when the Clark Circus set up winter quarters in Tuscaloosa. The owners and managers of the circus (Allie Clark and his brothers) lived in the boarding house. According to family stories, Allie and his younger brother Lum both started "courting" Emma. By the time the circus left Tuscaloosas in the spring of 1897, Emma had chosen Allie and married him before leaving to meet his parents in Indian Territory where her new father-in-law Wiley had just purchased a hotel. Emma's introduction to the Clark family was marred by the sudden death of Allie's father just after he had opened the hotel.
Pregnant with her first child, Emma spent the next two years helping her newly widowed mother-in-law Addie cope with the loss and wrap up their management of the Atoka Hotel while the Clark men toured with the circus. After her daughter Cleo was born, Emma, Cleo and Addie returned to Tuscaloosa in 1900 where Allie established them in a permanent home. For the next half-century, Emma remained in Alabama, raising her six children and some of her many grandchildren. She was assisted by her mother Dessie and mother-in-law Addie during the long absences of Allie with the circus.
After he retired, the nearly blind Allie came home to Tuscaloosa with a circus truck which he and Emma used to bring circus acts to local schools and churches. A reluctant Emma and a few of the children were the performers for these impromptu shows. When Allie died in 1941, Emma moved to a smaller house behind the home of her daughter Olive and continued to help care for grandchildren until her death in 1954.
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Emma is 25 degrees from Herbert Adair, 23 degrees from Richard Adams, 21 degrees from Mel Blanc, 28 degrees from Dick Bruna, 19 degrees from Bunny DeBarge, 33 degrees from Peter Dinklage, 18 degrees from Sam Edwards, 19 degrees from Ginnifer Goodwin, 20 degrees from Marty Krofft, 18 degrees from Junius Matthews, 17 degrees from Rachel Mellon and 19 degrees from Harold Warstler on our single family tree. Login to find your connection.