The Boston Post Cane was distributed to towns in the following states:
The information on this site does not claim to be an exhaustive list of the towns that received the canes. Information on other towns may be found in books that are available on the topic (by Barbara Staples) – visit your local library. It is important to note that the Boston Post reportedly only gave out 700 canes, but the records available for the newspaper do not specify which towns received them. What is certain is that not every town in those states received a cane.
The information here is based on research done by the Maynard Historical Society and then updated through discovered news articles and email submissions. Some undated entries may refer to research over ten years old, so your mileage may vary as far as current accuracy.
If you don’t find a town or person listed here it’s because nobody told us about them or we haven’t by chance bumped into that information. (Again, note that not every town in these states received a cane!)
If you have information you think should be included in these pages, please visit the Contributions page for details on how to submit updates.
Here’s how we’re doing as of early September 2016:
- Maine: we have updates from 227 towns.
- Massachusetts: we have updates from 156 towns.
- New Hampshire: we have updates from 115 towns.
- Rhode Island: we have updates from 19 towns.
With checkins from 517 towns we are now passed the 73% mark to finding what’s happening with all of the canes, and we appreciate everyone’s contributions.