Life is funny sometimes. You never know how your involvement in something can change a situation.
In May, my husband's grandmother passed away. She was 94 and passed away just six months shy of celebrating her 75th wedding anniversary with her husband. I was online looking for the obituary and googled my husband's grandfather's name (who is 98) to try and find it. When I looked at the results, I found one referring to the Boston Post Cane with his name associated with it. What is the Boston Post Cane, you ask?
On August 2, 1909, Mr. Edwin A. Grozier, Publisher of the Boston Post, a newspaper, forwarded to the Board of Selectmen in 700 towns* (no cities included) in New England a gold-headed ebony cane with the request that it be presented with the compliments of the Boston Post to the oldest male citizen of the town, to be used by him as long as he lives (or moves from the town), and at his death handed down to the next oldest citizen of the town. The cane would belong to the town and not the man who received it.
The canes were all made by J.F. Fradley and Co., a New York manufacturer, from ebony shipped in seven-foot lengths from the Congo in Africa. They were cut to cane lengths, seasoned for six months, turned on lathes to the right thickness, coated and polished. They had a 14-carat gold head two inches long, decorated by hand, and a ferruled tip. The head was engraved with the inscription, — Presented by the Boston Post to the oldest citizen of (name of town) — “To Be Transmitted”. The Board of Selectmen were to be the trustees of the cane and keep it always in the the hands of the oldest citizen. Apparently no Connecticut or Vermont towns were included (at one point it was thought that two towns in Vermont had canes, but this turned out to be a bit of a myth).
In 1924, Mr. Grozier died, and the Boston Post was taken over by his son, Richard, who failed to continue his father’s success and eventually died in a mental hospital. At one time the Boston Post was considered the nation’s leading standard-sized newspaper in circulation. Competition from other newspapers, radio and television contributed to the Post’s decline and it went out of business in 1957.
The custom of the Boston Post Cane took hold in those towns lucky enough to have canes. As years went by some of the canes were lost, stolen, taken out of town and not returned to the Selectmen or destroyed by accident.
In 1930, after considerable controversy, eligibility for the cane was opened to women as well.
You can learn more about the Boston Post Cane here. The site lists the towns in each participating state (MA, ME, NH and RI) and who the oldest person in each town in every state is (the bearer of the cane).
Well, it listed my WH's grandfather as the bearer of the cane in his town (North Berwick, Maine). However, I had never heard about his grandfather having such a cane, so I asked my mother-in-law about it. She said she'd heard of the tradition, but knew for a fact that he didn't have it in his posession.
Well that was all I needed to do. My mother-in-law got to work and yesterday, Foster's, the major paper for Southern Maine and New Hampshire, ran this story.
As you can read in the story, Grampa received the cane in an official presentation yesterday from the head Selectmen in his town. And even better, in order to keep the original safely displayed, his town had a replica of the cane made that he will get to keep!
No comments:
Post a Comment