Born in Woodland, California, Elston attended public schools. He graduated from Hesperian College, Woodland, 1892. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, California, 1897.

He was a teacher and was admitted to the California state bar, 1901. He worked as a lawyer in private practice. He served as executive secretary to the Governor of California (George C. Pardee) from 1903 to 1907.

He served as member of the board of trustees of the State Institution for the Deaf and Blind from 1911 to 1914.^[1]

Elston was elected as a Progressive to the Sixty-fourth Congress and reelected as a Republican to the three succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1915 – December 15, 1921). He served as chairman of the Committee on Mileage (Sixty-sixth Congress).^[1]

Elston killed himself in Washington, D.C., on December 15, 1921, by drowning in the Potomac River.^[2] He was cremated and the ashes placed in the California Crematorium,^[1] now the Chapel of the Chimes, Oakland, California.^[3]

• List of United States Congress members who died in office (1900–49)

• John A. Elston, late a representative from California, Memorial addresses delivered in the House of Representatives and Senate frontispiece 1924

  This article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress