SAVE THE DATE—2010 House Tour
November 6, 2010
Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Harvard Historical Society House Tour and Arts sale, followed by reception.
Tickets on sale soon.
The Boston Post Cane
The Harvard Historical Society, in conjunction with the Board
of Selectmen, is reinstituting the tradition of the Boston Post
Cane, an award honoring the town’s oldest citizen. Selectwoman
Lucy Wallace will announce this year’s recipient at Annual Town
Meeting and award the certificate. The recipient’s name will be
added to a plaque listing all former honorees, which is on exhibit
at the Society with the original cane given by the Boston Post
newspaper.
The tradition began in 1909, when Boston Post publisher Edwin Grozier came up with one of his many promotional schemes to try to keep the struggling paper alive. He began distributing walking canes to the selectmen of 431 towns in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island; the selectmen were to award the cane to their town’s oldest citizen, to be passed down upon his death to the next oldest citizen.
The canes themselves were works of art. Made by a well-known
New York cane manufacturer, the sticks were ebony from the
Congo, with a head of
14-karat gold that was rolled, cut, soldered,
and ornamented by hand. The Post called the cane “a tribute to
honored and useful lives, to thrift, temperance, and right living,
and above all to the superb vigor of New England manhood.”
In
the 1930s women, armed with their suffrage, took umbrage at these attributes being recognized only in “manhood” and began
demanding equal rights to the Post cane. Richard Grozier, son of
Edwin and editor and publisher at the time, readily gave approval.
Harvard was one of the original towns to be given a Post cane, and its first recipient was Absolom Gale in 1909. Nine men followed, including James Madigan, Alfred Willard, and Stanley Hildreth; the last in the line was Wendell Willard, who died in 1962. No women held the honor during this time. Perhaps the town was under the perception that the award was limited to men - or perhaps no woman wanted to admit her age!
Over the years many towns reported that their cane was lost, and some complained that families had refused to pass on the cane upon the owner’s death. With the Boston Post now defunct, the canes were artifacts of historical interest. Perhaps with some of these considerations in mind, the Harvard selectmen gave the cane on loan to the Harvard Historical Society in a ceremony at Town Meeting, March 2, 1963. With the shelving of the cane itself, the tradition seemed to come to an end.
Seventeen years later, the Harvard Post took up the tradition, but rather than take the now valuable cane out of storage, the selectmen and the Post decided to have a new one made, to be called the Harvard Post Cane. Jennie Heath received that cane on June 27, 1980. Elvira Scorgie, Eleanor Cottle, Helen Streeter, and Ann Turner followed. Then, unfortunately, the cane disappeared and the second Post cane tradition came to an end.
The Historical Society is pleased to start a new cycle of the tradition, going back to the original 1909 Boston Post Cane Award to recognize Harvard’s oldest citizen and pay tribute to an honored and useful life.
