The (Boston Post) Cane Mutiny...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau

When I was a teenager at the Poore House, I became a bit obsessed with a studio-tinted photograph in a large oval frame at the top of the old staircase.

Isabella (Belle) Greenleaf Ordway was the only child of Thomas Ordway and Martha Poore, born seven years into their marriage. She was a lovely child and considered a very beautiful young woman, and there are more photographs of her in the family record than almost any other member from that period. We have a daguerreotype of her as a child, another as a teenager, one as a young wife (this colorized photo was the portrait I loved) and another taken shortly before her death, at age 36, of septicemia, just three weeks after the birth of her only child, Thomas.

My mother remembers Tom, who died in 1966 and was strangely swarthy. “Just very tanned,” she said, but I’ll leave that door ajar.

Belle Ordway was thirty-four when she married the dynamically mustachioed Marcellus James in 1885. Belle’s mother, Martha Poore, was born in what is now my house, the daughter of Alma Hall Poore, who burst into flames in the last newsletter.

After her death, Marcellus married Belle’s first cousin, Clara, also born and raised in the Poore House. Poor Clara. Apparently, she was not considered a great beauty or even a particularly good catch. “But she could play the pump organ,” my mother said, musical ability transcending the bounds of physical attraction.

As a teenager, I imagined an entire story, based primarily on Belle’s portrait at the top of the stairs.

Neglected by her handsome but vain husband (the moustache was a dead giveaway), she has a torrid affair with a swarthy stranger, dies in childbirth, and leaves her husband to regret her passing for a lifetime. And Clara, chosen for her skill with the organ and not her other ambiguous charms, spends the remainder of her life in the shadow of her comely cousin’s ghost.

This is entirely fiction, of course, but I got to thinking about Belle, and Marcellus, and Clara recently because of a story my mother told me about a terrible injustice that she encouraged me to rectify.

It involves Marcellus James and the Boston Post Cane of West Newbury.

The Boston Post Cane first became a coveted part of New England life in August 1909. Boston Post newspaper publisher Mr. Edwin A. Grozier, eager to fill slow news days and understanding that recipients of the object would be likely to purchase his paper, sent to the selectmen of 700 towns in New England an ebony cane with a gold head, made by J.F. Fradley and Co. of New York.

Grozier sent the canes to towns, not cities, playing on the sentimental idea that townsfolk would be more likely to be representatives of the spirit of old New England (read: not immigrants), and requested that the cane be given to the oldest male citizen in the town, to be kept until his death and then handed back to the town for reassignment.

The Boston Post newspaper declined after the death of Edwin Grozier in 1924, and finally closed shop in 1957, but the buzz about the Boston Post cane carried on. In 1912, the Newburyport Daily News, ineligible for the cane because of its urban character, nonetheless reported on the presence of one Thomas Ingalls in Merrimac, “over 90 years of age and well preserved.” He had been the recipient of the cane several years earlier in Newton, New Hampshire, which rendered him a newsworthy addition to the town.

In 1936, just after his 85th birthday, Marcellus James, his bristled moustache now a snowy white, was the West Newbury recipient of the Boston Post cane.

As if it were not newsworthy enough that Marcellus James received the cane, he appeared in a variety of rustic poses in the Daily News five year later to celebrate his 90th birthday. He was, of course, still in possession of the cane.

“He milks six cows, morning and night,” the article gushed, under pictures of him alongside one of the aforementioned cows and in another, tossing hay with a pitchfork.

Belle Ordway’s 1st cousin, once removed, and Clara Poore’s niece, Emily Noyes Poore, my beloved great-aunt, was born in 1919. She was very much aware of the 1930 kerfuffle that resulted in extending to women the right to receive the Boston Post cane.

She lived in same house, now my house, for all her 96 years. For the last decade, it was all obituary clipping at the dining room table as she laid to rest one childhood friend or relative after another. One day, as she clipped away at the black-banded notices, I asked if she was sad. She sighed, not in self-pity, just to buy herself a minute to answer. “Gets to where (she said it ‘whayah’) everyone you know is gone, and then I guess it’s your time to go, too.” Then a moment, assessing the fullness of her statement. “Eh-yah.” That meant that it was enough said about that. Then she brightened. “But if I keep going, I’ll surely get the cane.”

I forgot all about this until recently when my mother and I were chatting about Aunt Emily. Apparently, the failure of the Boston Post Cane to arrive with suitable fanfare at her doorstep as she rounded 95, then 96, was a source of growing resentment, a surprise in a woman who never wanted to stand out, or have her picture taken.

Apparently, there are about 300 canes left in circulation. West Newbury has one of them. A quick search of the newspaper reveals that it was handed out in 2013 to Barbara Gove, who passed away at 99 in 2017, which would make her one year older than Aunt Emily, who died at 96 in 2015.

But still, I like that she wanted something, and she said so, loudly. She, who had done without needful things, let alone luxuries, for her whole life. It is an uncharacteristic display of appetite.

I like to think that she wanted the cane because she always thought Marcellus James was a bit of a show-off. This is based on truth – she once told me never to trust a man with a moustache or a woman wearing sunglasses as they were sure signs of vanity. I also love that she was already planning to live longer than anyone else in West Newbury when she was eleven years old, and he received the blasted cane.

The fervent desire for the Boston Post cane was not limited to Aunt Emily, either. Apparently, another West Newbury great-aunt, Jeanette Hills Poore, as she was fading away, age 95, in 2018, turned to my mother and said, with a conspiratorial whisper, “Do you know if Barbara Gove is still alive?

If any of you know where the West Newbury Post cane is today, will you introduce us? It seems important that I see what all the fuss is about.

Long life and happiness, my friends.