The Boston Post cane. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)

It started with a phone message from Phyllis Newman: “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you try to find out who has the gold-headed cane?”

A few days later I stopped by Hildreth House and interrupted the Skip-Bo game of Phyllis, Esther Fairbank, Janet Fowke, and Pat White.

“About the gold-headed cane... ,” I started.

“My mother had it,” offered Janet.

“Is it lost?” asked Esther.

“I think Ann Turner was the last recipient,” said Phyllis.

“Where is it now?” they all wondered.

I was befuddled. Not only had I no idea where it was, I had only the vaguest idea of what it was. Or is.

A visit to the Harvard Historical Society yielded a wealth of information. In the fiercely competitive publishing world of Boston in the early 1900s, the Boston Post was struggling to stay alive. Publisher Edwin Grozier came up with the grandest of his many promotional schemes. In 1909 he began distributing walking canes to the selectmen of 431 (accounts vary from 321 to 700, but the number is most frequently set at 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 of ebony from the Congo, Africa and went through a process of cutting, drying, hand polishing, and varnishing that lasted almost a year. The head was of 14-karat gold which was rolled, cut, soldered, and ornamented by hand. It was engraved with the inscription:

“Presented by the Boston Post to the oldest citizen of ____________.”

The first recipients, all men, averaged 90 years, with the oldest being 108.

A Sunday Post of 1909 announced two recipients (possibly the first) and gave the following tribute:

“The Boston Post gold-headed canes are not only handsome and substantial gifts in themselves, but they are considered especially interesting for what they signify, for they are intended as 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 woman held the honor during this time. Perhaps the town was under the perception that the award was limited to men—or perhaps there was no woman who 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, or all, 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, residents Charlie Perkins and Jake Donaldson approached the Harvard Post to suggest that a search be made for the old Boston Post cane. Mario Barba, vice-president of the Harvard Historical Society, quickly solved the mystery of the “missing” cane by explaining that it was in the safekeeping of HHS. Rather than take the now rather valuable cane out of storage, Barba and the Post decided to have a new one made, to be called the Harvard Post cane. Tim Carlson of a shop called Hands to Work on Pond Road made and donated a polished cane of curly maple, and blacksmith Craig Kaviar of Ayer Road donated a narrow brass plaque to be set into the cane’s shaft. The first recipient of the Harvard Post cane was Jennie Heath of Still River Road on June 27, 1980. Mrs. Heath was born on the fourth of July in 1884.

In a brief ceremony before Town Meeting April 3, 1981 Harvard Post publisher Kathleen Cushman presented the cane to Elvira Scorgie, 94. Cushman remarked, “We give you this cane, not for you to lean on, Miss Scorgie, but to symbolize how much we have come to lean on you.”

Cushman called Scorgie an amateur historian whose knowledge of the town is unequalled and who “shares information with the youngest elementary student as well as the most scholarly researcher.” Later, to a reporter’s congratulations, Miss Scorgie demurred, “It’s nothing I did, you know. I just grew.”

Elvira Scorgie held the cane until her death in 1993 at the age of 106.

Eleanor Cottle celebrated her 102nd birthday on Oct. 13, 1993 by receiving the cane. She was surrounded by nieces, grand-nieces, and a great-grandnephew. Among those present was Mrs. Cottle’s niece Evelyn Hammershaimb of Woodchuck Hill Road. Hammershaimb’s daughter Lyn and her husband Adam, the current owners of the General Store, now live in that house on Woodchuck Hill. Lyn says she remembers the cane. Mrs. Cottle came to Harvard in 1928 and for several decades she presided as the matriarch of a close-knit extended family. The beautifully landscaped grounds of her antique house on the corner of Slough and Woodchuck Hill roads were admired by passers-by for many years.

Only a short month later the cane was passed to Helen Streeter, 99, at the Ayer Road home where she lived with her daughter, artist Janet Fowke, and her son-in-law. Born in Worcester, Helen had been summering on Sheep Island for nearly 100 years. When she first came, at age six months, she made the trip by train, stagecoach, and rowboat. The story goes that her father and uncle that first summer put her in the pond to see if she could float. (Maybe that was the secret to her longevity!) She and her husband worked in New Mexico with Navajo Indians, and Helen was an accomplished pianist.

The next recipient of the cane was Ann Turner, who was 96 in March of 1996. She came to Harvard in 1928 where she and her husband rented Orchard End, one of Fiske Warren’s houses off of Bolton Road. A few years later they built their house on West Bare Hill, the first new home to be built in town in about 20 years. After his naval career, her husband went into real estate—the business later known as Turner-Pieters and Hazel. Ann Turner is 108 years old and resides in a life care facility.

And the cane? Connie McClellan remembers the cane on Ann’s wall, stuck behind a hanging platter. The unfortunate truth is that the cane was lost when Turner’s relatives cleaned out her home.

The mystery is solved: the Boston Post cane lives at the Historical Society; the Harvard Post cane lives in memory; the recipients of both live in legend.