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In a flea market near Fredericksburg, I came upon a bottle. It caught my attention because its label bore the name I had heard on several occasions when talking with hill country people: Watkins. The first reference had been made by a hill country woman who spoke highly of Watkins vanilla extract: "the best vanilla extract there ever was," she said with the authority of an experienced cook. But this bottle had not contained vanilla extract. The label reads: "Pain-Oleum" and declares the alcohol content to be an astounding 69%. Reddish-brown stains are spattered on the inside of the bottle. The label claims the contents to be "an aid in reducing many forms of pains, swellings, and inflammations. " Might Emma have used this product?

On the reverse side of the bottle, block letters show the Watkins name bold and clear. Just above the name, at a point delimiting about one quarter of the bottle's volume, there appears a raised glass line. Across the line,raised glass letters formed the words: TRIAL MARK. What was the purpose of a trial mark?

One of the best ways to get in touch with any historic persona is to try to imagine him or her going about the processes of living. Having placed Emma in time, I tried to make her come alive in my imagination. I created scenarios from the evidence I had collected, striving to be true to every detail. When parts of my image went blank or out-of-focus, I knew what I did not know about. That helped to focus my questions. The gaps in my imagining actually directed the search for new clues to Emma's story.

In Chapter Four of The Search for Emma's Story, I attempt to reconstruct Emma's daily life experiences, from sewing, tatting, and laundering,

and doing the mundane tasks of daily farm life, to visiting shops in Fredericksburg.

Along the way, I discovered the characteristics of that hill country town in the first decade of the twentieth century. Those discoveries are detailed in Chapter Four of The Search for Emma's Story.