The photo (left) of Kingsbury was received from the Archivist (Mr. Peder Hash) of Chevron in April 2015 following a letter sent to the CEO of Chevron (Mr. John Watson) by Onny Martin in February 2015.

We do not know the exact date of this photo - however, Kingsbury became President of Standard Oil of California (SOCAL) in 1919 at the age of 43, so perhaps this photo was taken at that time.

Additionally, Mr. Hash supplied a copy of the Standard Oil Bulletin of Nov-Dec 1937. This describes Kingsbury's career and confirms that he was a keen golfer. See the news article that was published at the time the photo and Standard Oil Bulletin was received by AGC.

In February 2016, the unofficial Club Historian discovered a second photo of K.R. Kingsbury (on right), seen to be of a person noticeably older than the person shown in the photo forwarded by Chevron in 2015. Noting that Kingsbury died age 61 (buried at Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California), this photo gives the impression of having been taken within a couple of years of his death.

Kenneth Raleigh Kingsbury (born 22/1/1876, died 23/11/1937, age 61) was the President of the Standard Oil Company of California and died whilst still holding the post. A report of his death was located in 2013, as follows:
Danville Bee, Tuesday, November 23,1937
COLON Panama: Kenneth R Kingsbury 61 president of the Standard Oil Company of California Kenneth Kingsbury Dies of Heart Attack

   Kenneth R. Kingsbury, 61, president of Standard Oil of California died of a heart attack last night on a vacation cruise to Havana aboard the liner Santa Paula. A.B. Swinnerton, San Francisco contractor and Kingsbury’s companion on the trip, took the body from Colon to Ancon and tentatively arranged to bring it here in a chartered plane. The oil company executive dropped dead while dressing for dinner as the liner was passing through Panama Canal. A coroners Inquest at Colon decided he died of a heart attack. Kingsbury, a San Francisco civic leader and Swinnerton left a week ago spend three days in Havana. Kingsbury started with the Standard Oil Co in Pennsylvania as a pipe checker and fireman Dec 27 1897. In 1919 he became the youngest president In the Standard Oil Corporation group.

Further insight into Kenneth R. Kingsbury was obtained from a Mr. Ken Kingsbury who is still alive and kicking, lives in Garland, Texas, USA and has chronicled the history of the Kingsbury family. After contacting him (29/8/08), he provided the following:

Since the The Kingsbury Memorial Cup was presented to the Club, it has always been awarded to the winner of the Flight-1 off-scratch singles match-play competition. The trophy is presented at the end of season Annual Dinner Dance, and its winner is hailed as the "Club Champion" for the season just ended.

James Andrew Moffett II, also known as James Andrew Moffett Jr. (born 30/6/1886, died 25/3/1953 age 66 - his tombstone, located at Woodlawn Cemetry, Bronx, New York, is not exactly modest), was another person who made his fortune through oil (the picture here is from 1933).

In June 1936, SOCAL (later Chevron) and the Texas Corporation (Texaco) created a new company called California-Texas Oil Company, Ltd. (CALTEX), to market and distribute the crude oil produced by SOCAL east of the Suez Canal and the refined products produced at their new refinery being built on Bahrain. Moffett was appointed Chairman of CALTEX on the company's creation in 1936 remaining as its Chairman until 1943. Moffett became Chairman [source] of Bapco in 1936 until at least 1941. A friend of the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the war, one may guess that this helped him to amass considerable wealth. A web search shows that he was under investigation in 1947, accused of selling oil to the US navy during the war at an inflated price.

So no wonder he could sponsor a trophy for AGC.

There is more intrigue. On the back of the trophy is the inscription: "Bapco Golf Club Won by 1937-38". So Mr. Moffett was pretty quick to design and deliver the trophy to the Club (probably from America), noting Kingsbury died on 23rd November 1937.

But this presents us with a bit of a conundrum. We have no competition record of any Kingsbury Cup winner for the season 1937/38, but we do have a record of the winner of the trophy at the end of the 1938/39 season (displayed on the Clubhouse Honours Board - Mr. C.R.B. Hopper).

So was the competition held for the first time in the 1937/38 season or the 1938/39 season?

The plot thickens. The Club is still in possession of this black & white photo (see it in hi-res 10.2MB filesize). The interesting parts of the photo, my dear Watson, are the name-plates. The two facing the camera read: "1940 P. Holdstock" and "1941 P. Holdstock".

But now click on the base photo below and zoom in to the high-res scan. There are two name-plates to the left side of the base, and - look closely - one nameplate visible to the right. Are the two on the left for earlier years - that is, 1938 and 1939? If so, then the Kingsbury Cup was indeed presented to the Flight-1 winner at the end of the 1937-38 season, thus matching the inscription on the rear of the trophy.

But then again, there could be another explanation. Firstly, we should look at the detail of the winners on the Honours Board:

• The first entry is for "1939 - C.R.B. Hopper"
• The competition had no winner in 1944 - the entry for 1944 is missing. [Ed: Onny discovered a message sent in November 1943 imploring for more golf balls ... is there no 1944 winner because the war appropriated rubber to more pressing demands that golf ball manufacture?]

If the earliest name-plate on the trophy base is that for 1940: P.Holdstock, then the base would have plates for season ending 1940+41, 1942+43, 1945+46 and 1947+48. So that does not fly, as the associated caption describes the photo as taken on Monday June 9th 1947 (four days after the Thursday Annual Presentation Dinner Dance).

Do the name-plates in this 9/6/47 photo not include the winner just announced four days earlier at the Dinner Dance? If so, then the eight plates are for season end 1938+39, 1940+41, 1942+43 and 1945+46.

Do the name-plates in this 9/6/47 photo include the winner just announced four days earlier at the Dinner Dance? If so, then the eight plates are for season end 1947+39, 1940+41, 1942+43 and 1945+46.

So exactly which seasons do the eight name-plates on the Kingsbury Cup base describe?

A common question for any Club is "When did you start?". Over the decades, it appears that the earliest winner detailed on the Kingsbury Cup Honours Board has been used as the basis to answer this question. This is for the 1938/39 season"1939 - C.R.B. Hopper". There was no record of a winner at the end of the 1937/38 season, so we cannot say whether the Kingsbury Cup was played for in the 1937/38 season, despite the inscription on the rear of the Trophy of "Season 1937-38". It seems everyone accepted the accuracy of the Honours Board and considered the 1938/39 season as the more relevant. And as a result, for many, many years we claimed our establishment year to be 1938.

However, that was until some bright spark discovered, in August 2016, this document and this document tucked away in a cyberspace galaxy far, far away. As a result of this discovery, now we claim that our establishment date was 4th January 1937, the date of the formal opening of our current course in the Riffa valley.

That same bright spark, desperate to find something to do in Bahrain during the global Coronavirus pandemic of 2020-21, in July 2020, discovered two photos of the competition's first recorded winner, C.R.B. Hopper, who arrived [Source] in Bahrain on 25th August 1933. This one was found in the "Lufkin Line" newspaper of July 1953 (page 12), while this one was found in the edition of September 1957 (page 8).