The registered cover above was sent on
April 30, 1904 from Barbados to Elder
John S. Kimber in Newport, Rhode Island. It passed
through the New York Registry Office on May 9th
and was received at Newport on May 10, 1904.
The stamp in the upper right hand corner pays the postage fees and is
the 21/2 pence ultramarine "Badge of
colony" issue of 1892 to 1903,
(Scott #74). The cover bears
an imprinted two pence "Registration Fee" stamp
(of the same design). Both
stamps are tied by a Barbados April 30, 1904 Circular Date
Stamp (CDS). There is a New York
Registry cancel on the face and both a New York and Newport, RI Registry cancel on the
reverse. |
John Shober Kimber was born
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 24, 1864. He was the
son of Anthony M. and Margaret Cope
Kimber. At the time this cover was sent, he was listed as the
minister of the Friends Church in Middletown,
(Newport Township) Rhode
Island. (There is an Evangelical Friends
"Quaker" Church currently listed in Middletown, RI.) John married Mary Haines Ecroyd,
(b.
5/20/61-d. 7/31/51) on October 12, 1887 in Muncy,
Pennsylvania. They had five children; John Anthony,
Thomas, James Ecroyd, Margaret
Williams and John Shober; the last born in
Middletown. John Shober Kimber died on December 8,
1937 in Los Angeles, California. The 1910
census lists John as living in Middletown, RI and
the 1920 census lists John and his family as living in
Los Angeles. Therefore, as close as I can come to the family
move is sometime between those two years. The 1920 census lists John as
an evangelist.
BARBADOS Barbados is an island
nation located about 100 miles east of the Windward
Islands in the Caribbean Sea. It has an area
of 166 square miles and the capital is
Bridgetown, which is also the island's only seaport.
Sugar Cane was the main cash crop until the
1950s, when the government began encouraging crop
diversification and since that time tourism has become the
mainstay of the economy.
The island was settled by British
colonists in 1627 and in the early 1640s
sugar cane was established as the island's main crop. Raising
sugar cane required a large labor force and this
led to the large scale importation of African slaves. By
1834 when slavery was outlawed, people of African
descent outnumbered Europeans on the island by a
factor of 4 to 1.
Barbados
became a member of the West Indies Federation
in 1958, however inter-island rivalries proved too strong
and they resigned from the Federation in 1962.
Barbados became an independent nation on November
30, 1966 and is a member of the British
Commonwealth. |