Biographical Sketch of Pauline Lynch Evans Creighton

Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920

Biography of Pauline Lynch Evans Creighton, 1869-1941

By Margo McCutcheon and Naile Sanders

This entry has been republished with special permission from the Handbook of Texas Women, a project of the Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association. <https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fcrei>. Accessed September 15, 2019.

CREIGHTON, PAULINE LYNCH EVANS (1868–1941). Pauline Lynch Evans Creighton, clubwoman and suffragist, was born on May 18, 1868, possibly in West Point, Clay County, Mississippi, to Hettie M. (Cochran) and lawyer, author, and Confederate captain and prominent Mississippi judge James Daniel Lynch. The couple had at least seven other children and employed a chef at their home in 1880. Pauline Lynch earned an education and attended college for two years. Lynch may have married H. L. Evans in Clay County, Mississippi, on April 10, 1889, and had one son, Hugh McCord Evans, on March 12, 1891, in West Point, Mississippi. Pauline Lynch Evans's parents moved to Austin, Texas, in 1884, and she may have joined them at a later date. No other information is available regarding H. L. Evans and their possible marriage. In 1901 she married John Orde Creighton, who had moved to Austin in 1900 to work for the Walter Tips company as a machinery salesman. The couple lived in Austin with their son John Orde Creighton, Jr., and Hugh M. Evans.

Pauline Lynch Evans Creighton devoted her time to local city improvement projects and national civil rights movements through her membership in several groups and clubs. She advocated improving the sanitary conditions of Austin and served as the vice president at the inception of the Civic Improvement Club that sought to "clean up the alleys and inaugurate sanitary methods of caring for and disposing of the waste and rubbish" in Austin. She also attended a meeting of the National Association of Public Health Workers. During World War I, Creighton participated in humanitarian efforts through the Humane Society and the Red Cross Society. She became a member of the Young Women's Christian Association in 1914 and participated in the Ladies' Guild at St. David's Episcopal Church. Creighton was actively involved in the women's rights movement in the early 1900s as well and became the president of the Austin Equal Suffrage Association in 1914 and joined the Austin Woman's Club. She worked with Jane McCallum and Minnie Fisher Cunningham in 1916 on procuring signatures for the suffrage memorial petition to Congress. During 1923 members of the newly-created Austin Altrusa Club, which shared the same principles as the Rotary Club and was comprised of business women building stronger relationships among women to benefit the community, elected Creighton president of the organization (she was also one of the club's directors). She was also a member of the Austin Golf Club and the Wednesday Morning Music Club.

Pauline Lynch Evans Creighton died on March 26, 1941, at the age of seventy-two. She was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Austin, as was her husband five years prior. At the time of her death, her son Lt. Col. Hugh M. Evans headed the Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Mississippi. Her son John Orde Creighton, Jr., became an internationally-trained singer who worked in Hollywood and New York. Creighton's father, James Daniel Lynch, and son, John Orde Creighton, Jr., have manuscript collections, including letters to Creighton, at Mississippi State University.

Sources:

Austin American, November 22, 1914; February 14, 1923; February 10, 1936; March 27, 1941. Austin Daily Statesman, November 7, 1913. John Orde Creighton papers, Special Collections Department, Mississippi State University Libraries. James Daniel Lynch papers, Special Collections Department, Mississippi State University Libraries.

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