Lone Walk is first performed by

Prior to his successor, John Andrew, being inaugurated, outgoing governor Benjamin Butler walks out the front door and down the steps of the State House and across Boston Common, unaccompanied, to signify his return to private life. Butler also begins another tradition, leaving gifts for his successor (a key to the governor’s office, a bible (because, he notes, he had found none in the governor’s office previously), the white oak “governor’s gavel” (made from the original timbers of the USS Constitution), and the two-volume state’s statutes (which governor’s henceforth inscribe to their successors). The traditions continue today, except for departures from the Lone Walk in 1937,* 2007, and 2015.