Catherine Cameron Southam was born in Glasgow, Lanark, Scotland, the 21st of April 1847. She was the daughter of Margaret Fairgrieve and John Cameron. Her parents were converted and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Scotland November 20, 1845. They emigrated to the United States and settled in Patterson, New Jersey when Catherine was about four or five years old.

The second child, James Alexander, was born at Patterson, Passaic, New Jersey the 22nd of September 1851. Later the family moved to St. Louis, Missouri and Catherine's mother, Margaret, died there March 5, 1855, at the age of 34 years, leaving Catherine age eight and James age four.

On October 15, 1855 Catherine's father married Mrs. Mary McFalls Tompson, Catherine's mother's sister. Mary died in St. Louis November 23, 1857.

John Cameron married a third wife, Alice Parkinson. Her first child, John, was born the 8th of September 1859. In the spring of 1861, John Cameron, with his family, started to emigrate to Utah with a company of Saints with Joseph Young as captain and Ancel Harmon as the assistant.

John Cameron had four yoke of oxen. When they had traveled for some days, he took sick and was not able to get out of his wagon. His wife was not well and he thought they would have to remain behind while the company went on, but Captain Young and assistant, Harmon, said they would help them until they were well and could keep up with the company that way. Catherine drove her father's four yoke of oxen with Oscar Young in charge to help her when needed.

When they arrived at the campgrounds of Florence, Nebraska (Winter Quarters), it was June 4, 1861. That night a baby girl was born to the wife of John Cameron. With the father and mother sick, a new baby and the little ones to care for, it made the responsibility very heavy for Catherine. That company, like many others, traveled all through the long hot summer over the prairie and mountains, reaching Salt Lake City in October 1861, where John Cameron made his home.

About 1862, John was called by the Presiding Bishop, Brother Hunter, to go to Round Valley to preside over a branch there. So he took his family and made another home there. On the 29th day of November, 1862, Catherine was married to George Southam in the Endowment House as his plural wife. The marriage was performed by D.H. Wells. George and his wives, Jane and Catherine, went to Round Valley to live for a time, and them to Morgan County and later to Evanston, Wyoming. George and Catherine became the parents of fourteen children, four of whom did not live to be named. George's first wife, Jane had only one child and it died in infancy in St. Louis, Missouri.

At one time, George Southam was called to go on a mission "without purse or scrip". Catherine was in bed with a new baby. They were poor, having no food stored and no one big enough to care for the money and children and home. But such was their faith that he went, leaving his wife and little ones in care of the Lord and the Saints. (Catherine C. Southam testified later in life that the Lord did provide and raise up friends in their time of need and she got along better than if her husband had been home.)

In the fall of 1885 George Southam sent his eldest son George Henry (Harry), out to Ashley Valley to look at the country in view of selecting a homestead. He said he wished to make his home in a Mormon settlement that his children might select life companions from among the Saints. Harry stayed in the valley that winter at the home of "Uncle" Jerry Hatch. On the 24th of December, 1885, while George Southam was crossing the Bear River, the ice broke and he and his team were drowned. His body went down under the ice and lay there five days while his family suffered and his friends searched in vain for the body. It seemed that they would have to give up the search, when the mother of George appeared to her thirteen year-old daughter, Alice, in the night. She told Alice where they could find the body of George. Alice told her mother about the visitation and said, "We will find Papa's body tomorrow." It happened like it had been shown to Alice in the night.

About a week before George was drowned, he had a dream that he was going on a mission. He told his wife he was either going on a foreign mission or be called to the other side of the veil. As they were living in a non-Mormon settlement, he told his wife that if he should die to be sure that he was laid away in his temple robes and among the Saints.

As early as 1871 Catherine began to assist and nurse those who were sick and in distress. She seemed to be a natural-born nurse. When she was a little girl she always wanted to have a number of dolls and play they were sick or injured so she could be the doctor and nurse and care for them. Her father always told her that she would be a nurse when she grew up. Those whom she visited and helped received such help and comfort that they never forgot the kind and loving heart, the skillful hands in sickness and the cheerful and sunny disposition of their friend. She assisted Dr. Harrison and Dr. Hawlker in Evanston, Wyoming while her own children were very young. She worked in the Deseret Hospital at intervals for about two years with Dr. Anderson and Dr. Mattie Paul Hughes, with Zina D. Young as Matron. (In 1911 she told her granddaughter, Alice Southam Cook, that she had assisted in the birth of over 1000 babies and most of them were without the aid of a physician.) She went out nursing several years after that.

In the fall of 1886, Catherine Southam together with her family moved to the Ashley Valley while the country was yet new and sparsely settled so that her children might grow up with the country and have plenty of chance to make homes for themselves.

The first year after the Salt Lake City Temple was dedicated, (1893) she was working in the temple, assisting her father to do the work for their dead relatives. She told her father that she thought she should have to give up the work among the sick as she felt it was almost more than she was able to stand- to take care of her family and be out with the sick so much. Her father said, "Catherine, you are all that your mother has to represent her here on earth and you are only fulfilling your patriarchal blessing where it says that you shall be as a well of living water in a desert, and people shall flow unto you and call you blessed." While still in the temple, some of the sisters came and told her that it had been made known to them that she was to be called and set apart to take care of the sick in the Uintah Stake as there was only one doctor and very little help for the sick at that time.

Catherine later went to Salt Lake City and took a course in obstetrics and spent a great deal of her time out among the sick. As she grew older and her health failed, she could hardly refuse the many friendswho were loath to give her up when they were sick. Many times she was out with the sick when more selfish people would have been nursing their own ailments. She would never fail to assist others in sickness while she lived if she was able to reach them. She always had a great desire to do all the temple work that she could for her kindred dead and to gather data and make a family record to leave to her posterity. As her sight failed she was unable to write and so she enlisted the services of a friend (Amy C. Gardiner) to write her family record and her history for her. She had a cancer coming on her nose and in her old age she had suffered much from pain and from sensitiveness to be thus afflicted. She never was one to complain and was medical aid and nurse to her self most of the time.

Catherine Cameron Southam died at the home of her daughter, Emma Holmes, the 30th of August, 1929 at the age of 82.