Emma Ruth Unruh Voth, born April 25, 1909, was the daughter of David P. and Justina Gaeddert Unruh. She was the youngest of eight children at the family's farm home near Goessel, Kansas.

Voth went to school at South Blumfeld (also spelled "Bloomfield") and Gordon Grade School. She was baptized at Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church in 1926 and graduated from Goessel High School in 1929.

Voth attended Bethel College, in Newton, Kansas, interrupting her studies to teach at a one-room school, South Blumfeld, then graduating in 1935. After college, she began a career as a high school English, speech, and dramatics teacher. She taught at Henderson and Stuart, Nebraska in the late 1930s and at Hillsboro, Kansas in the early 1940s.

Emma Unruh met her future husband, Waldo Voth, in high school. They were reacquainted while she was recuperating from encephalitis in Manitou Springs, Colorado in the mid-1940s. Waldo Voth was in nearby Colorado Springs serving in the Civilian Public Service camp. They were married at Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church in Goessel, Kansas on July 25, 1947. They had one son, Robert, born in 1950.

Emma Voth was a teacher at the Goessel High School from 1947 until the mid-1960s, and at the Goessel Grade School and the Goessel school library until 1974. She had completed a library correspondence course from Utah and started the school library. In retirement (1981) she directed the one-act play "Threshing Days" and helped to refurbish the South Blumfeld School.

Sufferring from Alzheimer's Disease during her last few years, Emma Unruh Voth died July 2, 1996 at the Bethesda Home in Goessel, Kansas, at the age of 87.