Dr. Stella E. Johnson: Medium

Today we’re featuring an otherworldly item from our archival collections: the business card of Dr. Stella E. Johnson.

This card lists Stella as a medium specializing in “Medical, Business and Developing.” For $1, patrons could arrange for a private sitting with Dr. Johnson between the hours of 10 to 12 or 2 to 9 in her quarters at the Hotel Bigelow, 17 Brookline St.

This building, later addressed as 35 Brookline St when street numbers were changed, was constructed in 1889 as designed by mechanical engineer Walter E. Lombard for owner Simeon Snow. An image of the building in 1933 can be seen in the second slide. Snow was a resident of Bigelow Street, a Boston-based leather merchant, and active in Cambridge politics of the day while Lombard was the husband of Snow’s adopted daughter, Nellie. Simeon Snow’s late-Italianate style apartment-hotel stood four-stories and contained accommodations for sixteen families. After WWII, like many wood-frame residences, the Hotel Bigelow was renovated and covered with aluminum siding and much of the detailing was removed to cut costs for owners. While today the building is unadorned, there may be some original fabric underneath the siding.

Dr. Johnson was born Estella E. Temple in Watertown on June 9, 1850. She married George W. Johnson on December 15, 1868. In the 1900 US census, George and Stella’s marital statuses were listed as divorced, with George living in Walpole and Stella with her brothers Joseph and Alfred in Cambridge. George died in 1903 and beginning in 1910, directories list Stella as widowed. Stella’s first appearance in the Cambridge directories appears in the 1892 edition when she is living at 17 Brookline St. This allows us to date her business card to around 1891. For the next few years, she is listed as a physician living at 353 Harvard St (now demolished) and from around 1896 until her death in 1913, she lived at 9 Meacham Road in North Cambridge.

In her obituary, published in The Cambridge Chronicle on 18 January 1913, she was praised as “skilled in the use [of] herbs and treatment of the sick, and it was her especial delight to afford relief to the sick and those in distress.”