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William Bennett Perot
First Postmaster General of Bermuda
Born	1791 New York
Died	1871 Hamilton, Bermuda
Occupation(s)	Pharmacist Postmaster General
Years active	1818–1862
Known for	Provisional stamps of Bermuda

William Bennett Perot (1791–1871), also written Pérot, of Huguenot descent, was a pharmacist and avid gardener, and the first postmaster general in Hamilton, Bermuda between 1818 and 1862, who, in 1848, introduced provisional stamps on the island. ^[1]

Life and work

Perot was descended from a French Huguenot family who arrived in Bermuda via New York. He was the great-grandson of Jacques Perot, whose son, also named Jacques, had been baptised in New York in 1714. ^[2]: 54 With his wife Susanna he had a daughter, Elizabeth. ^[2]: 71

The three family members are buried under the chancel of the Pembroke Parish Church of Saint John. ^[2]: 71

Par-la-Ville

Par-la-Ville, now called Queen Elizabeth Park, was formerly the residence and garden of Perot's home and post office. ^[3] As a horticulturalist, he spent much time in the garden. ^[4] During Perot's time it was outside the city limits that were marked by a famous rubber tree near the entrance. The property was acquired by the Corporation of Hamilton some time after Perot's death when it became a natural history museum and public library. ^[2]: 54

Perot Post Office

In 1848, Bell Heyl, a twenty-one year old pharmacist, who later became one of Bermuda's prominent pioneering photographers and visual historians, ^[5] worked with Perot in the little pharmacy located in the Queen Street post office. ^[6]

The Bermuda Government repaired and restored the building in 1959 with simple furniture much the same as Perot kept it ^[7] and there is a working post office there to this day. ^[8] It became a listed building in 2013. ^{[9] [10]}

Provisional stamps

Perot was the first postmaster general of Bermuda from 1818 until 1862 and in 1842 the colony was one of the world's first territories to introduce a uniform postal rate, two years after it commenced in the United Kingdom and three years before the United States. ^[1] Between 1848 and 1865 Perot made a provisional stamp by applying the handstamp, provided by London in 1841 which had the words HAMILTON and BERMUDA curved around the top and bottom of a circle and a year slug across the center, to a sheet of paper he gummed. Above the year slug he wrote One Penny and below he signed each stamp WB Perot. ^[11]

Eleven copies are thought to exist, six in black and five in red. Of these, three are in the Royal Philatelic Collection. ^[11] A single example fetched €114,000 at a Spink & Son auction in 2013. ^[4]

References

External links

• The Queen's Own: Stamps That Changed the World

Some sources

• Two Bermuda postmasters' provisionals top $175,000 in 2016 Feldman sale
• Bermuda Bios
• 1d Bermuda Postmaster Provisional 1848
• Early 1-cent "Perot" Stamps From Bermuda Worth A Pretty Penny Chicago Tribune
• Spinks Auction: 13045 - Stamps of Bermuda - Dr. the Hon. David J. Saul Collection
• Bermuda Historical Society Wayback Machine archive
• Rootsweb Perot family tree
• portrait on rootsweb.ancestry.com
• James Bell Heyl: Bermuda's Pharmacist-Photographer Pharmacy in History
• Spink "Perot" search
• 1st issue stamp sold by Spink - 95,000 sterling
• 2nd issue cover sold by Spink - 11,000 sterling