Mary Emeline was born c1834 in Georgia, probably in Marion County. Her parents seem to have died by the 1850 census, by which time Mary Emeline and her sister Delilah Rebecca were living in the Isaac Hendrick household. Some have suggested that their mother remarried to Isaac Hendrick, but his wife Sarah (Buckner) seems to have been the mother of his older children. Their relationship was likely to be close, though, as one of Mary's children's death certificates (Isaac Jr.) names her as "Mary Henricks".

One of the older children of Isaac and Sarah was Adeline Hendrick, who married a Joseph Sanders shortly before the census. "Aldermans in America" (William Alderman Parker) says Mary Emeline was the daughter of Joseph Sanders. Perhaps this younger Joseph was Mary Emeline's brother and thus Joseph Jr.. Mary Emeline did name one of her children "Joseph Sanders Alderman." No other source for Mary's father's name has emerged, and Aldermans in America does not cite a source.

Autosomal DNA matching between descendants of Mary, Joseph (Jr.), and Delilah Rebecca would suggest that the three were indicated siblings (including DNA segment triangulation). "Family lore" from descendants of Joseph who married Adaline Hendricks say that he married his first cousin. At least some descendants of Mary have significant DNA matches to descendants of Sarah (Buckner) Hendricks' siblings, indicating that Mary's mother may have been a Buckner.

Both Mary Emeline and Delilah consistently stated in the census(es) that both parents were born in Georgia.

Mary Emeline married James Joseph Alderman on 19 November 1850 in Marion County. Soon after, they (along with other local Aldermans and Sanders) moved to Leake County, Mississippi. The couple had six children before the Civil War began: Joseph Sanders, John James (died young), Sarah Ann, Rebecca Jane, Enoch Jesse (died young), and Cedonia Elizabeth.

James Joseph Alderman was killed in 1862. The following year, Mary Emeline filed a pension claim. The year after that, she married widower Isaac Newton Fisher. (Her children with James Joseph are incorrectly called "Fisher" in the 1860 Leake County census.)

Isaac and Mary Emeline had four children: John F., Isaac Newton, Susan, and Mary, the last of whom was born in 1873.

Isaac, Mary Emeline, their children, and her children with James Joseph all moved to Texas in the late 1870s. Most were enumerated in their own households on the same page of the 1880 census in Burleson County, Texas.

(Some of Isaac's siblings as well as his mother, Susanna Wells Fisher Massey, are also on this page. Mary Emeline's daughter Rebecca Jane married Susanna's grandson Till.)

Mary Emeline was buried to the left of he daughter Rebecca Jane. Researcher and descendant Dorothy Scruggs visited the marker several times. On her last visit, probably in the 1980s, she came with a small shovel to lift Mary Emeline's sunken stone and see if the marker had any dates. Unfortunately, the cemetery had been vandalized. Although Dorothy was able to find the remnants of other stones strewn about, she could not find a trace of Mary Emeline's.