Joseph W. Young was Captain of the Company they came to Utah with. Ancel Harman assisted John Cameron drive his four yoke of oxen to draw the heavy wagon. When they had traveled several days, John Cameron took sick, and was not able to take over again. Catherine was a young girl, but she drove her father's oxen with Oscar Young's help when needed. They had traveled up the river from St. Louis to Florence, Nebraska in a boat. When they arrived at Council Bluffs, Iowa, Jannett was born June 9, 1861, and her father was still sick, and now the mother was sick also. It was a very heavy load for Catherine to care for her sick parents, and the smaller children. Their company of Saints, like all the others, traveled all the hot summer over prairies and mountains to Salt Lake Valley, and arrived in late October, 1861.

They settled in Salt Lake Valley, until called by Presiding Bishop Hunter to settle Round Valley, the first settlers in Round Valley. Later Bishop Hunter let him have a piece of land, and helped him when he needed help. On the 28th November 1862, Catherine was married to George Southam in the Endowment House as his plural wife. John Cameron was put in charge of Bishop Hunter's farm in Round Valley, and also farmed his own land. George Southam also worked for Bishop Hunter until later when they moved to Morgan, and later to Evanston, Wyoming. They became the parents of fourteen children. Four did not live to be named. The first wife, Jane Carter Southam only had one child, a son- Finas Henry Southam born Jan. 28, 1856 at St. Louis, Missouri, and died there Oct. 21, 1856. George Southam was a kind and devoted father, and also a faithful Latter Day Saint, and fulfilled his calling in the church to the best of his ability- all of his assignments, as well as living an exemplary life, In the fall of 1885, George Southam asked his son, George Henry (Harry) to go out to Ashley Valley to look for a new home, as he wished to raise his family in a Mormon community, where his children might select companions of Latter Day Saint members. Evanston had many good people, but not many Latter Day Saints, and the railroad brought many who were not so good. Harry stayed in Ashley Valley that winter, and lived most of the time with Uncle Jerry Hatch.

On the 24th of December, 1885, while crossing the Bear River with his team and wagon, the ice broke and drowned George Southam and his team. His body went under the ice, and wasn't found for five days while his family suffered, and friends searched in vain to locate his body. All had given up hope of finding him, when the mother of George Southam appeared to his daughter Alice (thirteen years old), in a dream. She told Alice her name was Lucy Hunt, and she was George Southam's mother, and she needed her son to help her. She also told Alice where to cut the ice, some mile or so from where he had drowned to find him. Alice said she had seen the willow branch that he was lodged in, in her dream just as plain as when they saw it, and found her father. Alice woke her mother in the night after her dream, and said, "We will find Papa tomorrow." James Williams said he would try just this one more place, and then they would give up the search, as it was so cold on Bear River, cutting ice. This time Alice showed them the right place to cut, and they were successful. About a week before George Southam was drowned, he had a dream that he was going on a mission. He told his wife that he was either going on a foreign mission or would be called to the other side of the veil, and if he did die to be sure he was buried in a Mormon Cemetery, and in his temple clothes.

As early as 1871, Catherine began to work with the sick, and seemed to be a natural-born nurse. When a small girl she always had her dolls sick so she could doctor and nurse them better. Her father told her she should be a nurse when she grew up. In 1871 she started helping the sick, and they appreciated it so much- her kindness, they never forgot her kindness. She assisted Dr. Harrison, and Dr. Hawlker in Evanston, Wyoming. While her children were very young, Aunt Jane (George Southam's first wife) tended the children. She was like a mother to the children. I have heard the older children say they loved Aunt Jane nearly as much as their mother. She raised no children of her own, and she loved children very much, so she was a great help to Catherine in rearing her big family while she worked out with the sick. She worked in the Deseret Hospital at intervals- about two years with Dr. Anderson and Mattie Paul Hughes, and with Zina D. Young. In 1911 she told her granddaughter, Alice Southam Cook, that she had assisted in over 1,000 births of babies, and she still practiced many years after that. Her fee for her work was $5.00, if they had the cash, and most of the people she helped didn't, so she would take her pay in wheat or whatever the poor people had that they could spare. John H. Haslem, her grandson from Alice Haslem, was with her one day when she was making her last call on Mrs. John J. Davis- he was the President of the Uintah Stake- and he told her he didn't have money, but wheat he would like to pay her with. Wheat was next best to cash in those days. She got her seamless sacks she always carried under the seat in her two-wheeled cart (as she didn't have a buggy yet, but got one later to travel all over Ashley Valley, and Jensen, and Brush Creek). We filled the two sacks nearly full, as wheat was priced at $2.50 per sack. We were sweeping the wheat bin trying to fill the last sack, when she came on the scene, and said, "Brother Davis it that all the wheat you have?" He said yes, but he was about ready to thrash more wheat, so would soon fill his wheat bin again. She told Johny to dump that wheat back in under the boys' bed where we got it from. She said, "I never took the last kernel of wheat from anyone yet, and I won't take this from you." We drove away without any pay. It was customary to have twenty or thirty bushels of wheat under the homemade bed that the boys usually slept in, for safe keeping, and Brother Davis was no exception. I think Brother Davis paid her later, but I am sure she delivered more babies that she didn't collect pay for, than the ones she did.

Now back to her move from Evanston. In the fall of 1886, Catherine and her family, and her older daughter and her husband, Warren L. Allen, and their family, moved to Ashley Valley. This valley was yet new and sparsely settled, so her children could get homes of their own as they grew up. Before this move to Ashley Valley she was helping her father do the work for their dead the year the Salt Lake Temple opened. She told her father she would have to give up helping the sick, as she felt it was more than she could do while caring for her young family. 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 you will be as a Well of Living Water in a desert, and people shall flow to you, and call you blessed." While in the temple some of the sisters told her it had been made known to them that she was to be called and set apart to take care of the sick in Uintah Stake, as there was only one doctor, and very little help there for sick people. She was set apart by the President of the Church, and he told her if she would go to Ashley Valley, and honor her calling, he would promise her that her wheat bin would never be empty (which was a great promise in those days when wheat was so valuable, and her large family to feed). I, her grandson John H. Haslem, can testify that her children never went hungry or cold. They lived as well, or better than most other families in the valley. Everyone was poor out there those days, and all the neighbors wondered how she provided so well for her family. The Lord surely helped her.

She worked with the sick many years after she got a cancer that took eleven years to end her mortal life. She had such a desire to help others her spirit wouldn't give up. As she grew older she did more genealogy and temple work, and left a nice book of names of her ancestors, for others to do the temple work. What more could the Lord ask of one of his humble daughters. If all of her posterity can only follow in her footsteps, I am sure we will be OK in the next world, and live much happier here also. Later, in searching the county records of Salt Lake County, we found where she married John Shepard, an Elder and Temple Worker, Aug. 6, 1903. He had a nice small home at about 2nd Ave. and K St., Salt Lake City. She had hoped to spend the rest of her life doing temple work as she had promised her father, but for some reason that she wouldn't tell her family, this marriage only lasted a few years. Then she came back to Vernal, and took up her midwife business again, and practiced that until her cancer disabled her.

This is copied mostly from Alice Southam Cook's record she got from her father, Harry Southam, Grandma's oldest child. I have added some as I could remember, when I rode with her in her two-wheeled cart that she used to visit her sick patients in. I am 84 years old this year, and this is April 4, 1972.