TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON
RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY
The Emperor Norton Trust is pleased to announce that the Treasure Island Museum has issued a statement in support of the Trust's proposal that the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge tunnel through Yerba Buena Island, S.F., be named the EMPEROR NORTON TUNNEL.
Read MoreThe Emperor Norton Trust is pleased to announce that the national Freedom From Religion Foundation’s San Francisco Bay Chapter has issued a statement in support of the Trust's proposal that the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge tunnel through Yerba Buena Island, S.F., be named the EMPEROR NORTON TUNNEL.
Read MoreFrom 1864 or 1865 until his death in 1880, Emperor Norton is documented to have been a resident of the Eureka Lodgings, at 624 Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny, in San Francisco.
The two book-length biographies of Emperor Norton fleshed out those bones with the names of the landlords…
In 1939, Allen Stanley Lane noted that the Emperor's landlord at the Eureka was David Hutchinson.
In 1986, William Drury added the detail that Hutchinson was preceded at the Eureka by Aaron Babcock, who probably was the landlord who took on the Emperor at the Eureka. (Drury mistranscribed Babcock's first name as "Alfred.")
Our latest discovery — a part of the Emperor’s story that we believe is documented here for the first time — reveals that David Hutchinson and Aaron Babcock had much more in common than a famous tenant whose residency at the Eureka Lodgings stretched across both of their proprietorships.
The connection is to do with a marriage that probably was a significant — perhaps the most significant — reason why Emperor Norton's living arrangements at the Eureka were so amenable and so secure for so many years.
Read on to learn who was the groom and who was the bride.
Documentation included — as always.
Read MoreBetween September 1870 and May 1875, the Black-owned, San Francisco-based Pacific Appeal newspaper published some 250 Proclamations from Emperor Norton — by far, more than any other publication.
In an unsigned Proclamation published in the Appeal on 8 May 1875, the Emperor warned unsuspecting immigrants against purchasing lots in what he saw as a fraudulent real estate scheme by Charles R. Peters to build a new town called “Newark” on swampy land along the eastern edge of the narrow southern tip of San Francisco Bay.
After the exceptionally thin-skinned and litigious Charles Peters responded by suing the Appeal’s editor, the editor — Peter Anderson — published a retraction of the Proclamation in which he forbade Emperor Norton from bringing the Appeal any more Proclamations.
A Proclamation of Emperor Norton never again appeared in the Pacific Appeal during the Emperor’s lifetime.
The received wisdom has been that the unsigned Proclamation that ran in the Appeal on 8 May 1875 was the Emperor’s opening salvo against Charles Peters.
In fact, as we recently discovered — and as we believe is documented here for the first time — a shorter signed Proclamation on the same subject had appeared five days earlier — on 3 May 1875 — in the Oakland Tribune.
The differences in how the Tribune and the Appeal dealt with Charles Peters and Emperor Norton — and in how Peters dealt with the respective papers — is its own fascinating and very telling story.
Read MoreThe Emperor Norton Trust is pleased to announce that the San Francisco Historical Society has issued a statement in support of the Trust's proposal that the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge tunnel through Yerba Buena Island, S.F., be named the EMPEROR NORTON TUNNEL.
Read MoreThe Emperor Norton Trust is delighted to announce that California Lodge No. 1 of Free and Accepted Masons has issued a statement in support of the Trust's proposal that the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge tunnel through Yerba Buena Island, S.F., be named the EMPEROR NORTON TUNNEL.
Read MoreThe Emperor Norton Trust is pleased to announce that the Chinese Historical Society of America has issued a statement in support of the Trust's proposal that the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge tunnel through Yerba Buena Island, S.F., be named the EMPEROR NORTON TUNNEL.
The statement includes a broader endorsement of The Emperor Norton Trust’s long-term project of research, education, and advocacy that positions the Emperor’s support for the Chinese in the context of his larger civic mission.
Read MoreThe Emperor Norton Trust is delighted to announce that the Board of Directors of The Imperial Council of San Francisco has issued the first institutional statement in support of the Trust's proposal that the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge tunnel through Yerba Buena Island, S.F., be named the EMPEROR NORTON TUNNEL.
Read MoreCartoonists George Frederick Keller (of the San Francisco Wasp) and Edward Jump are well-known as artists who — during Emperor Norton's lifetime — often featured the Emperor in their works.
Much less well-known — indeed, not known at all by most — California pioneer artist and lithographer George Holbrook Baker (1827–1906) is credited with four depictions of Emperor Norton: (a) two in multiple-figure engravings published in 1864 and 1865 and (b) two unpublished sketches of the Emperor dated to c.1860.
The subject matter, dates, and attributions of the published works are not in question.
But, in this new analysis, we raise serious questions about the unpublished works, including: the characterization of the Emperor in these works, the dates, the artistic attributions, and — in one case — the subject matter itself.
If you've never heard of a white male anti-Catholic anti-immigrant secret society, the Patriotic Order Sons of America, that was established in Philadelphia in 1847 and briefly active in California in the 1870s and '80s, count this as one more reason to pull up a chair.
Includes images of very rarely seen works.
Read MoreBy February 1856, Joshua Norton was moving away from the Democratic Party, disgusted by corruption in the local party apparatus.
In August 1858, Joshua announced his intention to run as an “independent candidate” for U.S. Congress.
In one of his earliest Proclamations as Emperor, he lamented in October 1859 “that open violation of the laws are constantly occurring, caused by mobs, parties, factions and undue influence of political sects.”
Later, in 1869 and 1876, Emperor Norton issued Proclamations dissolving and abolishing the Democratic and Republican parties.
And in July 1875, he gave an impromptu speech at a “No Party” forum held at the Mercantile Library.
Comes a new discovery: In April 1862, Emperor Norton signed a petition calling on the “anti-party” People’s Party to begin the process of nominating candidates for the local San Francisco offices in the upcoming election.
This may be the earliest documented record of Emperor Norton — as Emperor — formally aligning himself with a specific independent approach to politics.
It may also signal a pivot towards a greater engagement with local and state issues after an initial period, 1859–62, in which the Emperor seemed more interested in national and international affairs.
Read MoreIn 1936, the San Francisco News ran a profile of 75-year-old "pioneer bartender" Jimmy Giusto in which Giusto claimed that Emperor Norton preferred a bag of candy to a drink.
This prompted a letter from a George Murphy calling out Giusto for exaggerating his pioneer bona fides. Murphy claimed to be "a gentleman who drank with 'Emperor' Norton" and went on to assert that the Emperor could not have frequented candy stores, as that would have made the Emperor a "sissy."
We disagree with Murphy on the last point, as there is a practical reason why Emperor Norton could have had a fondness for candy.
But, the whole episode illustrates how slippery memory can be.
Read MoreIn 1937, French and English contributors to two scholarly journals — published in Paris and London, respectively — tuned in to Emperor Norton, most of them for the first time apparently.
It’s hard to know what to think of the “evidence” they included — and how they treated it.
Read MoreBetween July 1865 and November 1867, Western Union ventured a project to lay telegraph cable under the Bering Strait that would connect Russian America (R.A.) — which became the U.S. territory of Alaska in October 1867 — with North East Siberia (N.E.S.).
A cultural by-product of this effort was The Esquimaux — a monthly journal/newspaper published in Port Clarence, R.A. (10 issues), and Plover Bay, N.E.S. (2 issues), between October 1866 and September 1867. The Esquimaux generally is credited as being the first newspaper published in Alaska.
The Western Union staffer who was The Esquimaux’s editor and proprietor had spent the previous five years (1860–65) working in various capacities at the San Francisco Daily Morning Call — which in early 1863 located to the 600 block of Commercial Street, where Emperor Norton took up residence sometime between summer 1864 and summer 1865.
Perhaps this made it inevitable that the Emperor would find his way into the pages of this little “tabloid of the tundra.”
Still. It’s a fascinating story.
Read MoreSurely no single artistic depiction of Emperor Norton has been reproduced more times, over a longer period, than the cameo “cut” of the Emperor that featured on the fronts of his various scrip between January 1871 and January 1880.
Although inked copies of the depiction appeared on some 3,000 of the Emperor's promissory notes over the course of 9 years, precious little can be said for certain about the original engraving — including who carved it.
In this exploration, we dig into various particulars of the two note printers of record — Cuddy & Hughes and Charles A. Murdock & Co. — and connect some dots that point to likely scenarios for (a) why and when the engraving was created; (b) what the model for the engraving was; and (c) how it was "stewarded" for 9 years.
Included here: A rarely seen — and very large — image of the earliest-extant Norton note from November 1870, including the Emperor's mostly-intact red wax seal.
Read MoreIn Victorian-era Britain and the United States, the mourning of a loved one or public figure was guided by an elaborate set of rituals and customs.
Among these: A man in mourning wore a black armband on his upper left arm. This could be a properly sewn and hemmed item — whether “homemade” or professionally manufactured — or, more simply, a hand-tied strip of black crape.
Often on this date — the anniversary of Emperor Norton’s death on 8 January 1880 — we at The Emperor Norton Trust have highlighted a particular late-1870s photograph of the Emperor, in profile, as the photo carries a certain funereal aspect.
Innumerable times over the last 12½ years, we have looked at this and another photograph of Emperor Norton from the same sitting without noticing that the Emperor is wearing a black mourning band in both photos.
As we don’t find this photographic detail documented anywhere, it stands to reason that no one else has noticed it either.
A little digging reveals who, most likely, the Emperor was mourning.
Read MoreProbably the most notorious contemporaneous fabricator of fake proclamations and fake tales of Emperor Norton was Albert S. Evans — editor of the Daily Alta California newspaper from 1863 until his death in 1872.
We've unearthed a previously unreported little cache of Evans's Norton tales which never appeared in the Alta — but which did appear in Evans's late 1870 Mexico travel memoir Our Sister Republic.
By way of hedging bets on the reliability of the book's content, the Alta's own review of the book noted that "[t]he author has a lively sense of the grotesque and humorous, which finds ample opportunity for gratification wherever he goes."
One question that hovers over our discovery...
Did Emperor Norton see Evans's misrepresentation of him in this book — and, if so, did this play a role in the Emperor's decision, a couple of months later, to designate a different paper, the Pacific Appeal, as the official platform for his public communications?
Read MoreUndocumented myths, legends, and apocryphal tales about Emperor Norton are not part of the Emperor’s biography.
But, if used responsibly, these extra-biographical resources can play a role in broader cultural portrayals of the Emperor.
Read MoreIn early 1850, Joshua Norton was brought before San Francisco Alcalde John W. Geary on charge of assault — and was found guilty and fined.
That’s how a “Pioneer” eyewitness remembered it in 1887, in the pages of The Overland Monthly.
Corroborating — preferably contemporaneous — evidence would be needed in order to give this story full credence. But, IF the story is true, it could be seen as providing an early anchor and baseline for later documented reports that Emperor Norton could be prone to having a short fuse, if he felt he was being disrespected.
It long has appeared that Emperor Norton’s reputation for supporting women’s right to vote rests entirely on his having signed an October 1878 petition advocating for the right.
Comes our new discovery that the Emperor attended a women's suffrage convention in San Francisco seven years earlier — in May 1871.
Emperor Norton's apparent early interest and engagement on suffrage raises the question: Why has there yet to surface a Proclamation in which the Emperor offers his take on women’s right to vote?
Included here — in addition to the discovery from 1871 — are new details about the 1878 petition and what we believe is the first publication of (a) images of this petition, including Emperor Norton's signature, and (b) a link to the petition that identifies the Emperor's connection to it.
Read MoreAmong close observers of the Emperor Norton story, Eadweard Muybridge's early 1869 photograph of the Emperor astride a velocipede is a fond and well-known piece of the visual record.
New evidence reveals who was acting as the “sole agent” — i.e., seller and publicist — for Muybridge’s work at the time he took this photograph — and points to a slightly earlier date for the photo than The Emperor Norton Trust previously has believed and used in its published research.
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