Cole receives Boston Post Cane

Houlton Pioneer Times Photo/Joseph Cyr
PRESENTATION — Terry Wade, chairman of the Monticello board of selectmen, presents the town’s Boston Post Cane to Faye Cole Thursday afternoon at her home. Cole was recognized as the town’s oldest living citizen.
By Joseph Cyr
Staff Writer
    MONTICELLO — The town of Monticello has a new recipient of its Boston Post Cane after the Board of Selectmen presented Faye Cole with the ornate gold cane Thursday evening.
    Cole, 95, is believed to be the town’s oldest resident, having been born on Jan. 12, 1916.
    “We went through the voting list and double checked everything to make sure,” said Monticello Town Manager Ginger Pryor. “That’s my biggest fear is that we might miss someone.”
    Pryor said the town has presented the cane to its eldest member for as long as she can recall.
    “I’ve been here since 1994 and it was circulating well before then,” she said.
    Cole welcomed Pryor and members of the Board of Selectmen into her home for the presentation. Several members of her family were present as well.
    The tradition of presenting a cane to a town’s oldest member began on Aug. 2, 1909, when Edwin A. Grozier, publisher of the Boston Post newspaper, forwarded about 700 canes to various towns throughout New England. According to the history of the Boston Post Cane website, “the gold-headed ebony cane came 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.”
    In 1930, women were included as eligible recipients of the cane.
    The canes were made by J.F. Fradley and Company, 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.”