Elizabeth Johnston (nicknames, "Johnsie" or "Lizzie")[3] Evans was born May 3, 1851, at Greensboro, North Carolina.

Her parents were Peter Gustavus and Anne Eliza (Morehead) Evans, who lived at New Bern, North Carolina, captain of a volunteer company of cavalry, and afterwards colonel of the 63rd North Carolina cavalry regiment, Confederate States Army.

She was a granddaughter of Peter and Nancy (Johnston) Evans, of Egypt, North Carolina, and of John Motley and Anne Eliza (Lindsay) Morehead, of Greensboro.

She was descended from Juduthun Harper, who served in the Colonial congress and was an officer in the Revolutionary Army.

Having presented the need for a reform school for delinquent boys to the Alabama Federation of Women’s Clubs, Johnston received the support of that body for legislative action, and was made chair of the legislative committee, authorized to press the passage of a law during the session of 1898–99, making an appropriation, giving a charter, and creating a board of control to be composed of seven women, the governor, attorney general, and secretary of agriculture.

She achieved her plans, and when the board was organized in 1900, was elected its president and held that position for 34 years, until her death in 1934.

[3][5] For 15 years, she, in association with her husband and Julia Tutwiler, ministered to the spiritual welfare of the prisoners in and near Birmingham, teaching in prison Sunday schools, especially to the convicts who worked in the Pratt Coal Mine convict camp.

[2][5] The greater part of her time, since 1915, was spent on her apple orchard, near Winchester, Virginia.

[2] On November 1, 1871, in Greensboro, North Carolina, she married Robert Daniel Johnston.