TO CATCH A STAR. By Jess Wilson Emily Muncy was a little girl when she came from Virginia to Kentucky in the late fall of 1833. Emily, then nine years old, was an orphan. She traveled with a family that had "adopted" her. Some think that Muncy was the name of her adopted family and that she was not a Muncy. However, as Emily is a name that appears in other Muncy families, I am inclined to believe that she was a Muncy. As she grew into a remarkable woman and I am also apart Muncy, I like to think of Emily as a cousin of some degree. Emily Muncy was about 19 or 20 years old when she married Anderson Bowles. Their descendants are now legion. Emily appears to have been a very strong woman of slight build. Her grandson, Green Flannery told me that his grandmother once rode a horse, sidesaddle, from Abram's Store at Big Hill to where Ray Wilson lived on Sturgeon Creek, carrying a turning- plow in her lap. She served as a midwife in the area where she lived "near the Sand Flats at the mouth of Grassy where the Chickasaw plums and the chinquapins grew." I don't know how near but I hope it was near enough for me to use this quote from her great grandson, Lloyd Bowles of Florence, Kentucky. During his lifetime, Carter Mahaffey of Green Hall told me "My grandmother Bowles was Emily Muncy. She came to Kentucky in a wagon when she was a little girl. They were camping by their wagon the night the stars fell." The night of November 13, 1833, when there was a brilliant shower of meteorites, must have been a fearful night for timid or superstitious souls. John Gilbert and Henry Sizemore were hunting on Rock House Creek (now Leslie County) that night. Although they were men that probably were not afraid of even the Devil himself, nevertheless, they placed their powder horns some distance from where they slept for fear the fire from Heaven would cause them to explode. Many feared that it was "The End of Time." Someone told me a beautiful story about that night at the wagon camp on the road from Virginia to Kentucky. How often does it happen that we see in the action of a child the quality of the adult they will become?. It should have been a revelation to the family that night that the little girl that traveled with them would grow into the brave and fearless woman she became. Emily was running around the camp, holding out her little apron, trying to catch a star. I have a picture of her that my half first cousin, once removed, Howard Wilson, loaned me. She may not have caught a star in her apron but in the picture you can see that she had stars in her eyes. Sitting on a shelf in this room is a small, cheap cream pitcher. Inside the pitcher is a note which reads: "My great, grandmother, Emily Muncy Bowles, was a famous midwife (granny woman). This pitcher was payment from a very poor woman she delivered of a baby one cold winter night. She gave the pitcher to my mother, Pearl Mahaffey Wilson-Baker when she was born April 1900 . Loaned to Jess Wilson, to be returned to Howard Wilson." Note by Jess: Pearl was a niece of Carter McHaffey. Her first marriage was to my half first cousin, Clifton Wilson. Her second marriage was to Bill Baker.