Born in St. Vincent, Kentucky, on August 12, 1903, Louise was the daughter of Charles and Mary Emma Payne Clements. She was one of seven children. Louise, like her older sisters, attended grade and high school at St. Vincent. In 1919, she enrolled as a sophomore at Mount Saint Joseph Academy. The first year, she won the gold medal for standard average in Second Academic Classes. Louise entered the novitiate at Mount Saint Joseph. After a postulancy of seven months, she received the Ursuline habit on March 20, 1922 and the name Sister Charles Emaline.
Sister Charles Emaline’s first assignment (1922) was teacher of the fifth and sixth grades at St. Joseph School in Owensboro. From there she went to Fredericktown, Browns Valley, Howardstown, Holy Cross, Flaherty, and New Haven in Kentucky. In 1937, she was assigned to the Mount Saint Joseph Academy faculty as history teacher. She earned the reputation of being a very entertaining teacher, inspiring many of her students to become history majors. She remained on the Academy faculty until 1965. She then went to her final mission assignment, St. Romuald High School in Hardinsburg.
Sister Charles Emaline kept a well‑organized scrapbook of all her missions along with pictures, class lists, and activities. She also included clippings of graduations of family members and other relatives, of ordinations, weddings and jubilees ‑‑ all neatly arranged and ready for future reference.
At the close of the school year in 1969, she retired from teaching and came back to the Motherhouse. In February 1970, she was taken to Mount St. Rose Hospital in Lemay, Missouri, for treatment of active tuberculosis. She died suddenly of pulmonary thrombosis on April 21, 1970. Her remains were brought back to Mount Saint Joseph the following day. Father Bernard Powers, Father Richard Clements and Father Walter Hancock concelebrated the funeral Mass. Sister Charles Emaline’s remains rest in the convent cemetery.