BECHUANALAND
Postal History, Postmarks
POSTAL HISTORY
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BECHUANALAND / Forerunner / Incoming Missionary Mail 1866 (13th July), incoming envelope from Cape Town addressed to “The Rev J. S. Moffat / Kuruman / Via Hopetown”. Bearing a single Hope Seated 4d pale blue (SG 24) tied by a light strike of the ‘1’ Barred Oval Numeral Canceller with a proving strike of a Cape Town (JY 13) single circle datestamp alongside. A very rare early example of incoming mail 19 years before it became the colony of British Bechuanaland on the 30th September, 1885.
Note: there was no official postal service serving Kuruman at this time, a post office only opened there in 1886. It is believed a monthly post cart served Hopetown and Kuruman via Griquatown from 1860. It is unclear if a postal agency was open in Hopetown in 1866. If there was, it appears they had no datestamp or cancelling device.
John Smith Moffat was born on the 10th March 1835 in Kuruman. He was the fourth son (of ten children) of the missionary Dr. Robert Moffat who had re-established a mission station at Kuruman in the early 1820s. He joined the London Missionary Society in 1858 and married Emily Unwin the same year and was the brother-in-law of David Livingstone. His father settled him at Inyati in 1859, where he lived for six years and helped start the first mission in Matabeleland. In 1865 he took over the running of his father’s mission in Kuruman and was the London Missionary Society's representative amongst the Bechuanas. In 1879 he resigned from the missionary society and joined the British colonial service. In 1884 he became the Assistant Commissioner to Sir Sidney Shippard in Bechuanaland. In early August 1888 he organised the Mafeking-Gubulawayo Runner Post between Bechuanaland and Matabeleland which covered nearly 500 miles.
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