Emma drowned in the 1939 flood. (For some time between 1935 and 1939 she lived in Portsmouth Ohio with some of her children, then came back to Morehead.)

Her obituary in the Bath County News-Outlook of Thursday, July 13, 1939, said “Woman Drowned At Morehead Related In Bath County -- Mrs. Emma Tolliver, 77, who lost her life in the Morehead flood last week, was a native of this county and a daughter of the late Nathan Riddle of the White Oak section. She was an aunt of Chester Snedegar and had other more distant relative here. Mrs. Tolliver and two other elderly ladies, so it was aid, were carried from their homes. Mrs. Tolliver, the first to be taken out, was placed on a pile of railroad ties while rescuers went for the other two women. When they returned for her after placing the other two on a box car, she was gone and the pile of ties nowhere to be seen. Her body was found the next day in a wire fence down the creek.”

Rowan County Marriage Register, Book A, p. 63, lists marriage of James H. Toliver to Emma J. Riddle on 16 June 1883, at Nathan Riddle's, witnesses Benjamin F. Hall, Leeta Reeves; by Wm T. Hall, minister.

Most of the information for the family of James Henry Tolliver and Emma Josephine Riddle is from James D. Reeder, 230 Lyons Ave., Morehead, KY 40351, his research dated 9 Nov 1987.