Ellen Louisa Tucker met Emerson on Christmas Day of 1827. When they married, on September 30, 1829, she was already ill with tuberculosis and she succumbed less than two years later. Ellen was 20 years old when she died on February 8, 1831.

Emerson mourned her death deeply and left the ministry shortly thereafter. When he and Lidian welcomed their first daughter in 1839, it was at Lidian’s suggestion that they named her after Ellen.