As a child she had a passion for books, was thoughtful beyond her years, and her parents encouraged in their daughter the tendencies which developed her powers to write and speak.

In her marriage to James B. Johns (1844–1927), which occurred in Lewistown, January 14, 1873, she found a companion who believed in and advocated the industrial, social and political equality of women.

[5] With the idea of pushing the agitation and of massing the forces to secure municipal suffrage, she arranged for a long series of congressional conventions in Kansas, beginning in Leavenworth in 1886.

After the bill became a law, her constant effort was to make it and the public sentiment created serve as a stepping-stone to full enfranchisement, and to induce other States to give a wise and just recognition to the rights of their women citizens.

She visited the Territory of Arizona in the interest of the recognition of woman's claim to the ballot in the proposed State constitution framed in Phoenix in September, 1891.

[8] In 1894, at the NAWSA convention, Johns was appointed Chairman of the Kansas Woman Suffrage Amendment Campaign Committee, with power to name the members thereof; that committee was appointed and organized as follows: Johns, chairman; May Belleville Brown, Secretary; Elizabeth E. Hopkins, Treasurer; Alma B. Stryker, Eliza McLallin, Bina A. Ottis, S. A. Thurston, Carrie Lane Chapman, Alice Stone Blackwell, Rachel Foster Avery, Anna L. Diggs, Sallie F. Toler, L. B. Smith, Helen K. Kimber, members.