March 1901: a WITBANK cover, and postal services in the Central Transvaal in early 1901.
The cover illustrated below – a recent eBay buy – is of unusual interest for several reasons. But, first, some background. Witbank (now eMalahleni) is a coal-mining town in the eastern Highveld, on the mainline railway from Pretoria to Delagoa Bay, about 115 km E of Pretoria and 20 km W of Middelburg. According to Putzel’s Encyclopedia of South African Post Offices, a postal agency first opened at Witbank in June 1898; it closed during the Boer War, then re-opened in January 1901 for military use, and in October 1901 for civilian use; and became post office in January 1903.
The cover was posted on 14 March 1901 from Witbank to a J.A.Brendel Esq. at an address in Brooklyn, New York. Two days later, on 16 March, it reached Middelburg; three days after that, on 19 March, it got to Pretoria. A slow start – but then, only just over a month later, on 21 April, it reached New York and was delivered.
The first point of interest is that the Witbank date-stamp on this cover appears to be unrecorded. It is a double circle cancellation, the outer circle 25 mm in diameter, with P.O. WITBANK between the circles above, and a cross-cut stop below; the date appears as dd.mm yyyy (14.MR 1901). Date-stamps of this type (25 mm double circle with P.O. and the office name above, and a cross-cut stop below) have been reported from a number of other Transvaal postal agencies and offices: BALMORAL , BANK, BRONKHORSTSPRUIT, BRUGSPRUIT, EERSTE FABRIEKEN, ELANDS RIVER, FREDERIKSTAD, GREYLINGSTAD, KAALFONTEIN, KRAAL, PAARDEKOP, PLATRAND, RANDFONTEIN, VAL, VOLKSRUST, WELVERDIEND, and ZUURFONTEIN. Interestingly, these are all on railway lines – on the line between Pretoria and Delagoa Bay (but none east of Witbank), on the line between Pretoria and Johannesburg, and on the lines between Johannesburg and Potchefstroom, and between Johannesburg and Natal.
The second point of interest is that the cover was posted several months before the Witbank postal agency opened for civilian use according to Putzel, and yet shows no sign of any military connection or of censorship.
Though this is slender evidence, it is tempting to speculate that early in 1901, there may have been a premature attempt to normalise civilian communications along the railways in a central core area of the Transvaal, marked by the issue of these P.O. cancellers. The fact that this cover took five days from Witbank to Pretoria might suggest that things were less normal than might have been hoped.
The third point of interest is that March is abbreviated as “MR..” in the Witbank cancellation and in the Pretoria cancellation. The Pretoria cancellation is a common one – Put 21, in use between late 1900 and late 1902, in which the month in the date line is abbreviated as three letters (JAN., FEB., etc.) for all months other than March. Several other examples have been seen dated MR.. 01 and MR.. 02, all with similar characteristics. Similarly in the group of “P.O. “ cancellers described above, the month s normally abbreviated as three letters, but March appears as MR, with an empty space between MR and the year, as in the Witbank cover. The explanation offered is that when the cancellers were ordered, they were supplied with March abbreviated as “MRT.”, the Dutch form, rather than “MAR.”, and that this was altered to “MR” as more acceptable to the British authorities.
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Sorry - here's the front of the cover ....
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Bas, You just took me on a trip down memory lane, I birded many of the places you mention here about a hundred years after this cover was sent. I can still see the towns and villages and the shops were I bought cold drinks. And the rocks, trees and birds that I saw during those visits. I doubt if what I saw was much different to what they looked like back in 1901.
Bas, as ever, I cannot add any further knowleledge to your research. I find your explanations fascinating, especially your suggestion that maybe there was an attempt to normalise mail despite the war, the fact that this type of date stamp was used along the railway line and your identification of the anglicisation of MRT to MR.
I am sure that the British would have wanted to normalise the mail system ASAP as it was then a good way to show recipients of TVL mail abroad that they were winning the war (which still had over a year to run and a lot of disappointments in between for both sides). Use along the length of the line suggests that perhaps we / you should be listing the railway towns not yet identified as using this PO TOWN date stamp in order that you can look out especially for covers from those places at this time. Finally, the use of MR vs MRT. This may sound a tad controversial to the Brits among us but is this not a small example of one of the main reasons the Boers were fighting the British (specifically the English - they did not dislike the dour Scots nearly as much) - which was to preserve their language and identity which they feared Brittania wanted to subsume? The Bitter Enders stuck it out in the field for another 14 months and by 1910 they got the result they largely wanted, not their republic back but political control of the country, which ultimately would decree Union era bilingual date stamps as an act of English / Dutch language equality.
Finally, Jamie, I remember passing through Witbank and stopping at a cafe for a cool drink. The place was smokey and reeked of sulphur from the coal mine. I thought I was in Hell. I am surprised you found any birds there worth seeing. Your birds were probably bats!
Steve, what you were smelling was the smoke from the underground coal fires, at night in places the ground glowed red. Despite the smell the birding was excellent and besides that I was used to the smell, I lived for forty years in Vereeniging!
I won't go into the bats except to say in Tzaneen I saw the Bat-Hawk breeding.
Steve - many thanks for your comments.
I've been looking for stations along the railway lines, but using an 1898 ZAR map and Mathews' 1910 Transvaal map - I don't have a 1901 map. If anyone can help with a better map, I'd be grateful - as also for scans of any P.O. TOWN date-stamps, and, in particular, 1901-2 covers with P.O.TOWN date-stamps.
Does anyone know about relevant Transvaal archives? I wonder whether there are any records of the ordering of the date-stamps - it seems possible that an opportunity to tender would have been advertised, possibly in the Government Gazette? And was there a Transvaal PMG's report for 1901?
Any help welcomed ...