town in the archive
Umueri
Recorded in Anambra. A place page gathers every related history, image, recording and document rather than opening only one article.
Connected writing
Histories about Umueri
Named in other records
Histories that mention Umueri
These are published records whose own words name Umueri. A mention is not a history of Umueri, which is why they are listed here rather than with the histories about it. Records already listed above are not repeated.
Read as: Umueri. Counted where the name is written with a capital, because a lower-case occurrence of a name that is also an ordinary word is the word.
The record
What the archive holds for Umueri
| Region | Anambra |
|---|---|
| State | Anambra |
| Division | Northern Igbo |
| Ethnic group | Igbo |
| Recorded as | town |
A town in the Anambra valley and one of the Umu-Eri, entered by the survey as a group of three communities — Agoleri (Aguleri), Igbariam and Nteje — under the name of the town.
Its towns are Agoleri, Igbariam and Nteje.
These three, together with Nsugbe, Nadi and Umuanya of entry 4 and Amanuke of entry 6, are said to have made up a single clan originally, with Nri at its head. The group lies in the Anambra valley.
Afigbo's genealogical charter makes Umueri the senior of the three segments descended from Eri, and argues that in strict Igbo usage the name should cover the whole fraternity — the primary segments, the Umunri, and the Umuiguedo — since all trace descent from Eri. Nteje, Nsugbe and Umunya are placed in the same fraternity without being fitted into the charter.
Afigbo would extend Umueri beyond the three communities Forde & Jones enter under that name, which he treats as the primary segments that did not expand as Nri did.
The name is used at two scales and the entry is filed under the narrower one. As a town, Umueri is one settlement of the Umu-Eri; as a name, Afigbo argues it properly covers the whole fraternity descended from Eri, which is why the three communities Forde & Jones call Umueri are not three towns inside one town but three towns inside one descent group. The fraternity has its own entry; this one is the town.
Sources
Forde & Jones (1950), The Ibo and Ibibio-Speaking Peoples of South-Eastern Nigeria, pp. 28-31, Table I, notes and geographical survey; Afigbo (1981), Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture, pp. 36-37; Wikipedia, "Eri (king)" (archived), for the town's place in Umu-Eri
Archive records
Photographs, oral testimony and documents connected to this community would appear here with provenance.
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