Ask Winnifred “Dolly” Ingalls of Windham for the secret to longevity, and she just shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders. But it just may have something to do with an exercise bike.

A longtime exercise enthusiast, Ingalls, 98, put over 26,000 miles on her stationary bike before the odometer wore out. At age 90, she was still peddling seven miles a day. When she turned 95, Ingalls cut that down to three miles a day, and now nearing 100 she still gets on the bike on a daily basis.

“I rode it this morning for two miles,” Ingalls said Monday, on the afternoon she was presented with the Boston Post Cane recognizing her as Windham’s oldest resident.

The Boston Post Cane is a tradition that goes back almost 100 years to 1909, when the Massachusetts newspaper gave gold-tinged canes to the oldest resident in each of 431 New England towns. Many of the canes have disappeared, but Windham recovered its cane just a few years ago. The town commissioned the creation of a replica, which was presented to Ingalls. The original sits in a display case at the town office.

Ingalls is the 19th Windham resident to hold the cane. The previous holder, Doris Tibbetts, passed away in March at 104. Before Tibbetts, Ethel Verrill held the cane from 2001 to 2007.

Ingalls, sharp and alert as she approaches her 99th birthday in November, is still very active, her relatives said, exercising daily on her bike and enjoying lunch with friends.

“She still lives by herself. She takes care of herself. She still drives,” said granddaughter Stacey Webster of Windham.

Not even a bad fall in April and the resulting broken hip could slow her down for more than a couple of days, Webster said.

“They wouldn’t send her to rehab because she was in too good of a shape,” said Webster. Ingalls’ doctor, she said, wants a picture of her on the exercise bike to show other hip patients that the injury does not mean an end to an active lifestyle.

Though Ingalls gets around well, meeting her friend Ada Ridlon every day for lunch, she doesn’t like to go far.

“I don’t go out of Windham,” said Ingalls, who lives near the rotary on Route 202. “Just up to the cemetery, or up to North Windham.”

Windham has changed a lot in her 98 years, and Ingalls has had a front row seat. Besides a couple of years living just over the town line in Gorham, Ingalls has spent all her life in Windham, starting in 1909 in a house on Depot Street.

“I was born in the first house after the railroad tracks on the left hand side,” said Ingalls, who was born Winnifred Wescott.

She later married Harry Ingalls, and the couple had a daughter, Joan (pronounced Jo Ann). Harry Ingalls, a janitor for the Windham School Department, died in 1982, and Joan passed away in December.

It was Joan who always wanted her mother to receive the Boston Post Cane, and Ingalls’ family has submitted her name whenever the honor has come up for presentation. At the ceremony, Ingalls said her only wish was that her daughter was there to see her hold the cane.

Windham resident