Founded in the spring of 1891 by Estacado merchants R.L. Stringfellow and H.E. Hume, Emma was named for Stringfellow's future wife, Emma Savior or Sevall, and began with a general store, a laid-out townsite, a picnic, and the sale of town lots. That fall, Crosby County's seat was moved from Estacado to Emma, and residents dismantled the Estacado courthouse and moved it piece by piece to Emma's town square, while businesses from Estacado, including the Crosby County News edited by J.W. Murray, also relocated there. Land speculators such as Julian Bassett of C.B. Livestock Co. and John R. Ralls came to the area, and over the next two decades Emma boomed. By 1910, it had several hundred residents, a post office, the Meyer Hotel, and a school, but that year the South Plains Railroad passed about five miles away on its route from Lubbock to Crosbyton, with Ralls later becoming another stop. After a disputed election moved the county seat to Crosbyton, most of Emma's homes and businesses were moved to Crosbyton and Ralls, the old courthouse was hauled to Cedric for housing before being razed, and the former county seat quickly became a ghost town, with Emma Cemetery the only remaining link to its former residents.