JOHNSTONE

Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Sunday, August 29, 2010 at 04:54:56 :

Independent Journal
Saturday, July 26, 1980

ELSIE JOHNSTONE

Elsie Johnstone of Inverness, a veteran of early battles for women’s rights and for public parkland in Main, died Thursday in a local convalescent hospital after a long illness. She was 97.

Mrs. Johnstone was born in California. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1903 and was one of the first women elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

She married F. Bruce Johnstone, a Chicago lawyer, in 1905. He died in 1967.

She was an early supporter of women’s rights, marching in suffrage demonstrations in Chicago.

She was an active conservationist. She and her husband worked for the acquisition of Angel Island and Tomales Bay state parks and the point Reyes National Seashore.

She spent summers in Marin, first at Camp Leale on the Tiburon Peninsula and then in Inverness, where her parents built a summer home in 1896. The Johnstones moved permanently to Inverness in 1941. She moved to The Tamalpais in 1969.

In Chicago, she was a board member of Glad’s Hill, an inner-city community center, the Juvenile Protection League and the YWCA.

In Marin, she was an early member of the Sierra Club and an active member of the marin Conservation League.

She is survived by a daughter, Isabel Johnstone of Sacramento; a son, Alan Johnstone of Inverness; four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Private family services have been held at Monte’s Mission Chapel, San Rafael. The family prefers memorial gifts to the Marin Conservation League.