Germiston 1899-1900: a puzzle?
Putzel's Encyclopedia has the following entry for the history of the Germiston post office:
"PAK opened 14.7.1887; PO 1895; PO closed August 1899; PO re-opened August 1901; PO continuous since then ..."
As Germiston is only 10 miles or so east of Johannesburg, and was important at the time both as a gold mining centre and as a railway junction, this seems very unexpected; it seems unlikely that the Germiston post office would have closed before the beginning of hostilities, or have remained closed for so long.
It's clear from cover and postmark evidence that Putzel's summary is incorrect. Though relatively scarcer than postmarks and covers dating between 1894 and 1899, a trickle of Germiston postmarks and covers dating between September 1899 and March 1900 (e.g. attached scans) show that the post office was still open; and again a trickle of covers and postmarks from August 1900 on (scans) shows that it had re-opened much earlier than stated; Richard Stroud in his recent book on the closure and restoration of ORC and Transvaal post offices in 1900-1902 quotes a recently-discovered document in the Transvaal archive in which Germiston appears in a list of offices that were re-opened in July 1900.
But what does seem surprising is the relative scarcity of Germiston covers and postmarks dating between September 1899 and June 1900: they exist (the latest seen so far is a newswrapper posted on 22 MAR 00), but, given Germiston's location and importance, surely more would be expected. I'd welcome any comments or explanations.
Uploaded files:
Dear Bas, I had a good look at my Germiston postmarks, these are the only ones dated 1900.
- 23 MRT 1900
- 13 OCT 1900
- 08 NOV 1900
Nice postmarks - many thanks; however the 23 MRT postmark is almost certainly 23 MRT 01, not 23 MRT 00. In the NOV 0- and OCT 0- postmarks, the dash in place of the second zero is horizontal and level with the middle of the first 0, while in the 23 MRT postmark what looks like a dash is higher and slopes up to the right, and the rest of the number 1 is visible even if paler; the 23 MRT stamp has a V.R.I. overprint (not issued until June 1900); and the Z.A.R. at the bottom of the postmark appears to have been removed (which didn't happen until early in 1901).