From Frances Wilcox (great-granddaughter):

Catherine must have had an unusually strong character. It was the Scotch women who were the original “Scotch covenanters”. Both Catherine and her mother-in-law Margaret McLeod can be given credit that their husbands and children were devout Christians.

She was a wonderful homemaker and even in the new homes to which Christopher took her she kept her standards. Willard Dillman was impressed with her white tablecloths and cheerful candlelit kitchen. She always had a warm welcome for the men of the family when they came in from work -- good food with wonderful home-baked bread and the butter she churned. In the morning the family had prayers after reading a chapter from the Bible. In fact, Willard as a youngster of 4 or 5 was so eager to learn to read that he used that Bible as his source of learning.

That Catherine and her husband lived to a ripe old age in an era when life expectancy was 18 years speaks well for their prudence as well as their good luck, and the protection of the Almighty, whom they trusted and prayed to daily -- hourly, probably.

Mama loved both Christopher and Catherine, and told me a great deal about them. In an age when the Minnesota wilderness was filled with atheistic Germans, heavy drinking woodsmen, and Indians on the warpath, it meant everything to a young girl, growing up and longing for the btter things of life, that her grandparents loved and worshiped God and trusted Him for their daily protection.

It had been very hard for Catherine to leave so many of her family in Nova Scotia --- brothers and sisters, and daughter Eliza Yuill. She had Mama write letters for her, unable to do it herself because she wept when she tried. Eliza had four children: Martha Ellen Yuill Crowe, Zuie Yuill Black, a daughter who married a Nelson, and Arthur Yuill’s father.