Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Evelyn Pope (Mrs. J. Williams) Lord, 1869-1960
By Lizzie Mafrici, undergraduate, University of Maryland, College Park
Evelyn Pope (Mrs. J. Williams) Lord was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1869. Her parents were Hannah M. and Daniel F. Pope, of Maryland and Rhode Island, respectively. Her father, Daniel, worked in produce. She was the youngest of six, with siblings George, Fred, Bert, Annette and Mamie.
Evelyn Pope graduated from the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1891, and she went on to work as a nurse for Johns Hopkins Hospital. In 1895, she founded the Instructive Visiting Nurses Association. As a nurse, she focused on urban public health and education, specifically in Baltimore. When Evelyn Pope started the Visiting Nurses Association, it had a staff of fewer than five people. By 1992, the organization had grown to over three hundred staff members who provide care to those who are homebound, mainly the elderly and the terminally ill. Evelyn Pope (Lord) eventually became a Life Member of the Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae Association. She also created a small collection, the Evelyn Pope Lord Collection, within the Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. It contains her diploma and documents pertaining to the alumnae association.
At Johns Hopkins, Evelyn Pope met fellow Johns Hopkins staff member, Dr. Jere Williams Lord. Pope They were married on June 8, 1898. Jere Williams Lord was born in 1864 in Maine and was a physician at Johns Hopkins. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University with his Bachelor of Arts in 1884, and he studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania from 1884-1887 before becoming a physician. He lectured on dermatology and anatomy at various schools, including Johns Hopkins University and Baltimore Medical College. He assisted in writing a textbook, Diseases of the Skin published in 1892. Jere Williams Lord was the secretary of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland in 1898 and a member of the Baltimore Club and the Medical Journal Club.
Evelyn and Jere Williams Lord lived on North Charles Street in Baltimore and had three children: Llewellyn (born 1901), Jannett (born 1902) and Jere, Jr. (born 1911). Jannett studied music at Bryn Mawr College and later married Bill Tucker, a Princeton graduate, who worked at the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation. Janette died in 1963. Although Evelyn Pope Lord was a nurse, according to the 1930 census, she later retired from nursing and became a homemaker. The family enjoyed a position of social status, one indicator being the employment of house servants. They also had a second home on the Severn River, named Indian Landing Bungalow. Often, the Lord family spent summers in resorts in Maine. Another indicator of their high societal ranking is that their whereabouts were often written about in the Anne Arundel County newspaper, Evening Capital.
Evelyn Pope Lord was a member of, and did prominent work with, the Equal Suffrage League of Baltimore and the State Equal Franchise League of Maryland. The Equal Suffrage League of Baltimore had approximately 1,000 members. In 1909-1910, the Equal Suffrage League worked for an amendment to the Baltimore City Charter, extending municipal suffrage to anyone over the age of 21 who was eligible to vote for representatives to the state House of Delegates or who could demonstrate literacy or owned at least $300 of property and had paid taxes on it for two years prior to the election. This effort failed both because of general opposition to woman suffrage and because of the opposition of most Maryland suffragists to bills that would limit woman suffrage to the literate or propertied. Women in Maryland did not win the right to vote until ratification of the federal 19th Amendment in 1920.
Evelyn Lord was involved with bettering her community both as a nurse and community activist. She became chapter regent of the Anne Arundel Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in 1914. Starting in 1920, she also served as a board member for this chapter of the DAR.
Evelyn Pope Lord died on November 6, 1960, in a nursing home in East Hampton, New York. She was buried in Druid Ridge Cemetery in Baltimore alongside her husband, who had died in April 1933.
SOURCES:
“Appendix A: Credentials List.” In Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Continental Congress of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C., April 17-23, 1916. New York: Carey Printing Co., 1912, p.881. Google Books.
Finding Aid. Evelyn Pope Lord Collection, 1891-1895. Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD. Accessed June 9, 2019. https://medicalarchives.jhmi.edu:8443/papers/lord.html.
“Going to Casco Bay.” Evening Capital (Annapolis, MD). August 14, 1922, p.3. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83009667/1922-08-14/ed-1/seq-3/.
Hall, Clayton Colman, ed. “Jere Williams Lord.” In Baltimore: Its History and Its People. Vol. 3: Biography. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1912, pp.713-14. GoogleBooks.
Harper, Ida Husted, ed. “Maryland,” chapter XIX in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6: 1900-1920. New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922, pp. 258-76. [LINK]
Hawks, Ellen. “Keeping her Husband's Memory Alive.” Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, MD).
April 28, 1992, online. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1992-04-28-1992119198-story.html.
“June Weddings: Lord-Pope.” Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, MD). June 9, 1898, p.7. Newspapers.com.
“Mrs. Lord Dies at 91.” Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, MD). November 7, 1960, p.15. Newspapers.com.
United States Census 1870, 1880, s.v. “Sarah E Pope, Baltimore, MD.” HeritageQuest.
United States Census 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, s.v. “Evelyn P. Lord, Baltimore, MD.” HeritageQuest.