Perot Post Office
The Perot Post Office is located on Queen Street in Hamilton. This little antiquity still functions as a post office and is a delightful place from which to send letters and postcards whilst on your Bermuda vacation.
It’s named after William Bennet Perot who was Hamilton’s postmaster from 1818 to 1862. Perot issued the first stamps in Bermuda, though the idea is thought to be that of his close friend, James Bell Heyl, a chemist hailing from Virginia.
The cost of mailing a letter in Bermuda was one penny. As Perot spent more time in his garden, now Par-la-Ville Park, than in his post office he provided a box where customers could drop their mail and pennies. Not surprisingly Perot often found that there were more letters in his box than pennies. He was obliged to deliver all letters but had no way of determining who had paid and who had not.
Perot consulted his good friend James Heyl who suggested that he issue his own stamp. Perot used a date stamp and altered it so that the month and date did not show on the final impression. The resulting stamp was circular with the words ‘Hamilton’ on the upper edge and ‘Bermuda’ on the lower edge. The year appeared horizontally in the centre of the stamp. Perot then wrote ‘one penny’ above the year and signed his name below it.
Only 11 of these stamps currently exist and, like many valuable things in the world, several of these are owned by Queen Elizabeth II. The earliest is dated 1848. In 2003 one of the stamps fetched $105,000 at auction in London.