Library of Congress & Emperor Norton Trust Update Emperor Norton's Birth Year from 1819 to 1818
The Library of Congress, at the request of The Emperor Norton Trust, has updated its information for Emperor Norton, changing the Emperor’s birth year from 1819 to 1818 and adding 4 February 1818 as the birth date.
In 2018, The Emperor Norton Trust led San Francisco’s citywide celebration of the Norton bicentennial, producing Emperor Norton at 200 (link), a 6-week series of talks, exhibits and special events. Partners in the series included the California Historical Society, the San Francisco Public Library, the Mechanics’ Institute, the Society of California Pioneers and the City and County of San Francisco.*
Based on the Trust’s research, the Library of Congress now has updated its name authority record for Joshua Abraham Norton.
This record includes birth and death information. The previous record was “Norton, Joshua Abraham (1819–1880).” The updated record — now the Library of Congress’s authorized subject heading — is “Norton, Joshua Abraham (1818–1880).”
The Library explains that an authority record
is a tool used by librarians to establish forms of names (for persons, places, meetings, and organizations), titles, subjects, and genres and forms used on bibliographic records. Authority records enable librarians to provide uniform access to materials in library catalogs and to provide clear identification of authors and subject headings….
Authority records also provide cross references to lead users to the headings used in the catalog, e.g., a search under: Snodgrass, Quintus Curtius, 1835-1910 will lead users to the authorized form of heading for Mark Twain, i.e., Twain, Mark, 1835-1910.
When one looks up Emperor Norton in the digital catalog of the California Historical Society — or the San Francisco Public Library — or the Bancroft Library (UC Berkeley) — or the California State Library…
The institution’s own subject heading — which unlocks search results — is based on the Library of Congress’s name authority record for the Emperor.
Countless research institutions — public and private; large and small; in the United States and elsewhere; from major university libraries to state historical societies to museums — use the Library’s name authority record for Emperor Norton in their own catalog and database entries for him.
So, it’s not difficult to see the potential influence of the Library of Congress’s update to the Emperor’s information.
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According to Melanie Polutta, the 20-year Library of Congress policy specialist who implemented the change, the Library has been using an 1819 birth date for Emperor Norton for more than 35 years — possibly for several decades more than that. In an email, Polutta writes:
The 1819 birth date looks like it was used when the name authority record was created. Unfortunately, this was before we did things electronically, so I have no way of finding out the actual date of creation with any certainty, other than to say it was before 1985, which is when the record was first created in an electronic format. However, I will note that we do have a book that was first published in 1927 in our catalog, in which this name was used as a subject heading, so it may in fact be that old.
Here’s a screenshot of the complete updated name authority record at the Library of Congress website authorities.loc.gov (click the image to enlarge).
Library of Congress name authority record for Joshua Abraham Norton, updated 3 March 2020. Permalink to plain-text version here. Sources: Library of Congress Authorities (click the first research result: “Authorized Heading”) and Library of Congress Name Authority File.
Notable:
In the subject heading, “1819” has been changed to “1818”
A specific birth date has been added: “1818-02-04.”
For cross-referencing purposes, the previous name authority record, “Norton, Joshua Abraham (1819–1880),” has been “demoted” to a “Variant.”
There also are cross-references to “Norton I, Emperor” and “Emperor Norton.”
A new notation credits The Emperor Norton Trust as the source for the birth date:
Emperor Norton Trust website, viewed Mar. 2, 2020: Blog post: Joshua Abraham Norton, b. 4 February 1818 (citations from from Emperor Norton: The Mad Monarch of America (1939) and Norton I: Emperor of the United States (1986) indicate his birth year was 1818; manifest from ship that conveyed the family to California in 1820 states that Joshua Abraham was two years old; family genealogists consider his birth year 1818; possible circumcision record indicates probable birth date of Feb. 4, 1818)
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The Library of Congress Catalog shows how all of this works “one level down.”
Here’s a screenshot of the updated subject listing at catalog.loc.gov that reflects the “1818” update to the name authority record for Joshua Abraham Norton (click the image to enlarge).
Library of Congress subject listings for “Norton, Joshua Abraham (1818–1880). Source: Library of Congress Catalog.
Clicking on the first search result opens up a list of sources. One of these — as an example, to show how the updated name authority record for Joshua Abraham Norton shows up in specific catalog listings — is William Drury’s 1986 biography, Norton I: Emperor of the United States.
Here’s a screenshot of part of the listing for the book, with Joshua Abraham Norton sub-listed under “LC Subjects.”
Detail from Library of Congress Catalog listing for William Drury’s biography, Norton I: Emperor of the United States (Dodd, Mead, 1986). Source: Library of Congress Catalog.
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Prior to the Library of Congress update, all of these records and listings showed “1819” as Emperor Norton’s birth year.
The many research institutions and databases that use Library of Congress authority records now will be able to use the Library’s updated name authority record for Joshua Abraham Norton to update their own subject headings for him.
As this happens, 1818 will become more and more widely accepted as the year when the Emperor was born.
Never mind what a handful of well-meaning but ill-informed subjects of the Emp put on his gravestone in 1934.
Headstone at Emperor Norton’s grave in Woodlawn cemetery, Colma, Calif. Photo © 2015 John Lumea.
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Special thanks to Susan Goldstein of the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library — Susan also serves as San Francisco’s City Archivist — for providing initial information on how to approach the Library of Congress about making this correction to the Library’s information about Emperor Norton.
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For more on our Emperor's Birth Date Research Project, please visit the project page here.
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For an archive of all of the Trust’s blog posts and a complete listing of search tags, please click here.
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