(2017)
Edwin Atkins Grozier (1859-1924).
Provincetown has less than a handful of great old mansions. Grozier’s home at 160 Commercial Street, with its marvelous widow’s-watch cupola, is one of them. So it is absolutely fitting that he and his family members should have made their eternal home in the most elegant mausoleum in town, an especially refined work of neo-Classical design. Grozier was the publisher of The Boston Post. In 1909, he devised what may be the nation’s most enduring newspaper promotional gimmick: the Boston Post Cane, a gold-headed ebony walking stick given to hundreds of towns in The Post’s circulation area, to be awarded in turn to the town’s oldest living citizen, then transmitted to his successor, and then to his successor’s successor, and so on. (For the first 21 years, only men were eligible.) The Post closed in 1956, but many towns — including Provincetown — continue to hand down their Boston Post Canes to their oldest citizens. Who knows how many ex-cane holders may be scattered around near Grozier’s white marble tomb? Entombed with him are his wife, Alice Goodell Grozier (1864-1943); their son, Richard Grozier (1887-1946); and Richard’s wife, Margaret Grozier (1899-1933). Alice Grozier owned a hilltop property in the far West End that is now designated 11 Oppen Lane.
¶ Last updated on 27 February 2020.
Provincetown’s Historic Cemeteries and Memorials, O-87, Page 26.