Bargery, George Percival

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 0102 MS 380516
Held at	: School of Oriental and African Studies   Click here to find out how to view this collection at http://www.soas.ac.uk/Archives/home.html ›
Full title	: Bargery, George Percival
Date(s)	: Created c1946
Level of description	: Collection (fonds)
Extent	: 2 boxes
Name of creator(s)	: Bargery | George Percival | 1876-1966 | missionary and linguist

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

George Percival Bargery was born in Exeter on 1 October 1876. He was educated at Hele School, Exeter, Islington College and the University of London. He was ordained as a chaplain to the Church Missionary Society in 1899. In 1900 he went to Northern Nigeria, where he served as a missionary until 1910. In that year he was invalided home as unfit for further service in the tropics, but within two years he had been accepted for a post in the Colonial Education Service and was back again in Northern Nigeria, where he remained until 1930. It was for his work during this period that he is best known. After founding the first government school among the Tiv people on the Benue, he turned his attention to the Hausa language and was appointed Government Examiner in it. In 1921 he was seconded by the Governor, Sir Hugh Clifford, to compile a dictionary of that language. His Hausa-English Dictionary was published in 1934 and included the first tonal analysis of the Hausa language. For his work he received a Doctorate in Literature from University of London in 1937.

While he was still working in London on the final stages of the dictionary, Bargery was appointed as Lecturer in Hausa to the School of Oriental Studies. He was made Senior Lecturer in 1935, and Reader in 1937. He did not retire from this post until 1947. After his retirement from the School he continued similar teaching under the Colonial Office at both Oxford and Cambridge until 1953. In 1953, at the age of 77, he returned to Kano at the invitation of the British and Foreign Bible Society, to superintend work on a new Hausa translation of the New Testament. He was awarded the OBE when he returned to England in 1957. He outlived both his wives: Eliza Minnie, whom he married in 1906 and who died in 1932, and Minnie Jane, whom he married eight years later, and who died in 1952. He had one son by his first marriage. Towards the end of his life he was plagued by ill health and became almost totally blind. He died on 2 August 1966.

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

Papers, c1946, of George Percival Bargery, comprising Hausa grammar and vocabulary notes.

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English and Hausa

System of arrangement:

The items are arranged chronologically where possible.

Conditions governing access:

Unrestricted.

Conditions governing reproduction:

No publication without written permission. Apply to archivist in the first instance.

Finding aids:

Unpublished handlist.

Archival Information

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

Donated c1987 by the Africa Publication Trust Library

Allied Materials

Related material:

The School of Oriental and African Studies also holds papers on African languages of Roy Clive Abraham (Ref: MS 193280) and Frederick William Parsons (Ref: PP MS 50).

National Register of Archives: Click here to view NRA record

Publication note:

Description Notes

Archivist's note:

Rules or conventions:

Date(s) of descriptions:
15 May 2000