[1] Katharine was the oldest of six children of a prosperous local businessman, Zachary T. Smith and his wife, Mary Susan Jackson.

Katharine was well educated and attended the State Normal and Industrial School, now known as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in the fall of 1897.

[4] The couple then moved in R.J's Queen Anne-style mansion located at 666 Fifth St in Winston-Salem, site of the present-day Forsyth County Public Library.

Involved in both the design and construction, Katharine envisioned a progressive, self sustaining country farm and estate built upon the selected 1,000-acre land outside of Winston-Salem.

[3] Construction took eight years and, when the Reynolds family moved in in December 1917, Reynolda was home to a farm complete with the latest in technology and agricultural practices, a dairy, recreational facilities, and a school.

[9] During World War I, through the R.J Reynolds tobacco company, she made monetary contributions to the Red Cross to aid in shelter,food, and supplies overseas as well as formed a local chapter with several other prominent women.

Mrs. Johnston had wanted to erect some really worth while memorial personally, and when notified of the action of the city authorities, it seemed that this plant, which would be so closely identified with the life of the people, young and old, presented the opportunity for which she was looking.

In a letter to a friend around this time, Katharine reported that “His trouble seems to have started [in the summer] with gastritis which went into a small stomach ulceration which healed very quickly, but left him in a rundown, nervous condition.”[16] As his illness became more severe, he had traveled between treatment centers and hospitals with lack of success.

While originally allowed access to her husband, his doctors eventually prohibited all visitors, on grounds that his worry over business matters was worsening his condition.

The Reynolds family and friends were joined in the funerary procession by Reynolda servants, local Masons, a Boy Scout troop, and thousands lining the streets of downtown Winston-Salem.

A year into the mourning period, she began holding Sunday evening dances for teachers of the newly expanded estate school.

Katharine was the most eligible bachelorette in Winston-Salem high-society; the relationship caused much gossip due to the age and class difference.

[25] Describing telling her parents of the relationship, she wrote that “I told them how I’d worked and planned for the happiness of others, but now I was working and planning day and night for my own..."[26] J. Edward Johnston and Katharine married June 11, 1921, in the Reception Hall of Reynolda House, in front of the inglenook fireplace, in a small ceremony attended by her three youngest children.

[25] After a multi-month honeymoon abroad in Europe,[4] the couple settled in a cottage on the Reynolda Estate, leaving the children in the main house under the primary care of their governess, Henrietta van den Berg.

[29] The new Mrs. Johnston soon became pregnant and they, along with Katharine's children Mary, Nancy, and Smith, moved into a New York apartment to have easier access to doctors for the pregnancy.

The night of May 1, 1922, a baby girl, Lola Katharine Johnston, was born to the couple, but passed away a day later at 11 o'clock in the morning.

On May 21, 1924, she gave birth to a son, J. Edward Johnston Jr; however, due to complications of a brain embolism caused by this childbirth, she died three days later at the age of 44.

Johnston intended for Katharine, and himself eventually, to be interred at the site; however, her son Dick insisted her grave remain at Salem Cemetery where she was buried beside her first husband.

To her was given the vision of life in its larger meaning; She wrought with understanding heart for a greater future for mankind; All that love and labor for this cause rise up and call her blessed; ANNO DOMINI MCMXXIV."

Known as the Katharine Smith Reynolds Scholarship, it grants honor student recipients funding for community service involvement as well as internship and study abroad programs and opportunities.