Alice Willard Bond, 96, is the new keeper of Woolwich’s Boston Cane given to the town’s oldest resident.

Selectmen David King Sr., Lloyd Coombs and Jason Shaw presented Mrs. Bond with the ceremonial walking stick April 27, at the town office. She became the town’s oldest resident following the recent passing of Clint Hilliker at age 98.

Mrs. Bond was born Jan. 15, 1920 in Hartford, Connecticut and grew up in Wethersfield, the state’s oldest town. It was settled in 1634 by some of her ancestors.

After graduating from Norwalk School, now Central Connecticut State University, she became a teacher and taught in East Windsor and Wethersfield schools. She married Edwin Burnham Bond of Essex, Connecticut. He died in 1990.

According to Mrs. Bond, her husband was descended from one of three Burnham brothers who immigrated to Maine from Bristol, England on the ship Angel Gabriel. The shiplanded in what’s now Bristol, Maine in the 1600s and sank off Pemaquid Peninsula in a hurricane.

Mrs. Bond said she and her husband had owned a Volkswagen dealership in Old Saybrook, Connecticut for 18 years. It was among the first dealerships to sell the famous Beetle automobile. They enjoyed traveling together and visited Europe, Greece and Turkey.

They moved to Maine in 1974. Mr. Bond opened a bicycle shop in Brunswick, Brunswick Cycles. Mrs. Bond worked for Coastal Enterprises, Inc. in Wiscasset.

For a time, she served as secretary of St. Phillips Episcopal Church on Hodge Street in Wiscasset. After selling her home on Route 218 in Wiscasset she moved in with her daughter Nancy and her family on Old Stage Road.

The Bonds have two daughters, Carolyn Burnham Bond (Mrs. Harvey Davis) and Nancy Willard Bond (Mrs. Phillip Gosline) and four grandchildren, Ian Davis, Laura Davis Drown, Justyn Gosline and Courtney Gosline and several great-grandchildren.

The passing of the Boston Cane is a tradition entirely unique to New England. Woolwich is among a number of Maine towns that continue to carry on the custom begun more than a century ago by the now defunct Boston Post newspaper in Boston.

All of the canes were handmade from seasoned African ebony imported from the Congo and topped with a 14-karat gold knob with the following engraving: “The Boston Post to the OLDEST CITIZEN of (space left for the town’s name). To be Transmitted.” The oldest resident keeps the cane for as long they live, or until they move away, when it then passes to the next oldest.

The cane Woolwich passes on isn’t the original one. The authentic Boston Cane is kept on display at the town office.

In the 1990s, Todd W. McPhee, a former Woolwich selectman, compiled a list of the town’s Boston Cane recipients. Although his research fell a few years short of the beginning, it dates back to 1914. The list is updated and included in each year’s annual town report.