Lincolnville’s oldest resident turned 98 on June 16, and that did not go unnoticed by the Town. With fanfare, and bearing an honorary gift, all five members of the Lincolnville Select Board and Town Administrator visited the Megunticook Lake home of Nancy Bishop.

There, her extended family had also gathered for the surprise, and as the town bestowed on Nancy Bishop the Boston Post Cane, she smiled and graciously accepted the distinctive honor.

In 1941, George Hardy built a cabin for Bishop’s parents on the shores of the lake, and as a young teenager she began her annual visits to Maine, traveling from Pennsylvania each spring.

These days, she winters in New York City, and still makes it to her Maine home, where she’d rather be year-round, “if it wasn’t so cold in the winter,” she said.

Presenting the Boston Post Cane to the oldest citizen of a town is a tradition now of many Maine communities.  The legacy of the gold-headed Boston Post Cane and its presentation to the oldest resident of a New England town was conceived by a publisher of the Boston Post daily with an eye toward increasing circulation in 1909.

On Aug. 2, 1909, Edwin A. Grozier, publisher of the Boston Post, forwarded to the selectmen in 700 New England towns 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 lived, or moved from the town.

The cane would belong to the town and not the man who received it.

The custom was expanded to include a community's oldest woman in 1930.