4. John C. Taylor was the first to translate the Bible’s New Testament into Igbo language in 1866. His translation served as the foundation for all subsequent Igbo Bible translations, including the Union Igbo Bible of 1913.

3. J. C. Taylor co-authored a book with S. Crowther called ‘The Gospel on the Banks of the Niger: Journals and Notices of the Native Missionaries Accompanying the Niger Expedition of 1857-1859’ published in 1859 by the CMS in London, the same place and year he became a priest.

2. Taylor accompanied other CMS members, including S. Crowther, on expedition of William Baikie in 1857 to the Niger. He established the first permanent Christian mission in Igboland at Onitsha on July 26, 1857.

James Frederick Schon, Samuel Crowther, Simon Jonas, J.C. Taylor and the recording of the Igbo language, Pt. 4 James Christopher Taylor was a freed Igbo-born ex-slave linguist and missionary at Sierra Leone. He was a member of the CMS and became an Anglican clergyman in 1859.

James Frederick Schon, Samuel Crowther, Simon Jonas, J.C. Taylor and the recording of the Igbo language, Pt. 3 Simon Jonas was a freed Igbo-born ex-slave linguist and catechist at Sierra Leone. He was a member of the CMS and became James Schon’s Igbo language assistant in 1841.

4. As the leader of the mission, Crowther published the Isoama-Ibo Primer, not out of intellectual dishonesty or theft, but as a common and normal practice at the time. Historians clarify Crowther’s role in this project, though, as more of an “editor and publisher”, not author.

3. Crowther compiled and published the Isoama-Ibo Primer in 1857 made possible through the intellectual labor of Simon Jonas (Igbo) as the primary linguistic architect. Although Crowther published the work in his name, he gives credit to Jonas for it in a book published in 1882.

2. Crowther led CMS members in the 1854 and 1857 expeditions of Scottish-born Dr. William Balfour Baikie. He was accompanied by Simon Jonas, J. C. Taylor, Augustus Radillo (Igbo), Thomas King (Yoruba), W.C. George (Igbo), Charles Paul (Yoruba),and other Afr. CMS linguistic agents

James Frederick Schon, Samuel Crowther, Simon Jonas, J.C. Taylor and the recording of the Igbo language, Pt. 2 Samuel Crowther was a freed Yoruba-born ex-slave linguist and missionary at Sierra Leone. He was a member of the CMS and became an Anglican clergyman in 1843.

5. Schon’s ‘Oku Ibo: Grammatical Elements of the Ibo Language’ was published in 1861. The completion of this book was made possible by Schon’s receiving of the journals and linguistic work produced by John Christopher Taylor (Igbo) during the 1857 Niger Mission at Onitsha.

4. James F. Schon however abandoned work on the Igbo manuscript during the 1841 mission in Nigeria due to some liguistic constraints. Schon would later resume work on the manuscript and publish it decades later under the title– Oku Ibo: Grammatical Elements of the Ibo Language.

3. Schon is credited for creating the first manuscript of the Igbo language, which consisted of a collection 1,600 Igbo words. This was a working project with the contribution of freed ex-slaves of Igbo descent, including Jonas, in Sierra Leone prior to the 1841 Niger expedtion.

2. Schon led CMS members in the 1841 Niger expedition of Captain Henry Dundas Trotter of the (British) Royal Navy. He was accompanied by freed ex-slave from Sierra Leone which included Samuel Crowther (Yoruba) and Simon Jonas (Igbo). The Schon-led mission was evangelical.

James Frederick Schon, Samuel Crowther, Simon Jonas, J.C. Taylor and the recording of the Igbo language, Pt. 1 1. James Frederick Schon was a German-born missionary and linguist. He was an Anglican Priest and member of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) at Sierra Leone.

Source: Journal of the Royal Colonial Institute, vol 25; pg. 334-335 [1894]

3. “the last century were this not brought into contact with the Yorubas, and consequently very little was known about them until about the eighteenth century.”

2. “The Yoruba did not inhabit the territories on the sea coast, the Ewe and Benin tribes occupying the coast line, and so covering all the sea frontage of the inland territory occupied by the Yorubas, so that slave traders and others who frequented the Slave Coast during..

Yoruba Invasion of southern Nigeria by A.B. Ellis (1894) 1. “The Yorubas are not, properly speaking, a coast tribe, but really an inland people, and it was not until the beginning of the present century that they moved to the south and colonised Lagos and the adjacent littoral..

The phrase ‘Oghene of Uhe’, or ‘Oghene n’Uhe’ as some may say, was created by J.U. Egharevba and first used in 1936 in his book ‘A Short History of Benin’. There was a Lord known as Oghene, as reported by Portuguese explorers but there was no ‘Oghene of Uhe’.

2. “By the time of Duarte Pacheco, Ogane (Hooguane) had been located at a little more than one hundred leagues to the east of Benin (Esmeraldo, p. 126). He was probably a chief in the Niger Delta.” (1937) Pg. 127