Norton Sibling Exodus, 1838–1851
A Partial Post-Postscript
Last week, I published an essay about Emperor Norton’s younger sister, Selina Jane, who was born in Grahamstown, South Africa, in April 1824; was married in Cape Town in June 1843; and was living in England as early as January 1844.
Shortly after posting the essay, I added the following postscript:
Selina married Donald Hume MacLeod in Cape Town in June 1843 and was living in England within a year — possibly within as little as 6 months.
For Selina, was the promise of getting out of South Africa part of Donald’s appeal? Did she view her marriage and subsequent move as an escape plan?
Equally significant: Did Selina’s older brother Joshua see it that way and start planning an escape of his own?
This much we know: Less than 2½ years later, in late 1845, Joshua left Cape Town on a ship for England, where — in Liverpool, February 1846 — he boarded the Massachusetts-built ship that landed him in Boston in March.
Was it Selina who planted the seed for that journey and who — for Joshua — put it within the realm of possibility?
When Joshua arrived in England in early 1846, Selina still was in Kent.
Did she and Joshua see one another before he left for Boston?
Did Selina help with Joshua’s travel arrangements?
Did she see him off in Liverpool?
Hmmmmm.
But, wait! There’s more!
Before proceeding, it helps to know that, between 1816 and 1832, John Norton and Sarah Norden — the parents of Joshua Norton, the future Emperor of the United States — had 12 children, in the following order:
Louis (b.1816)
Joshua (b.1818)
Philip (b.1820)
Esther (b.1822)
Benjamin (b.1823)
Selina (b.1824)
Henry (b.1825)
Louisa (b.1826)
Elizabeth (b.1826)
Abraham (b.1828)
John (b.1830)
Mary Ann (b.1832)
It also helps to know that, by 1844, Joshua Norton’s father John was up to his eyeballs in debt — and that that this financial crisis had been brewing since 1840 or earlier.
John Norton was not eager to take responsibility for any of this. In July 1844 — at age 50 — John sent two angst-ridden “woe is me” letters to his eldest son Louis, then 28, in which he blamed everybody but himself for his sorry financial state.
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BETWEEN 1838 and 1843, three of John and Sarah Norton’s daughters were married:
Esther (b.1822) married Henry Benjamin Kisch in 1838, at 16.
Selina (b.1824) married Donald Hume MacLeod in 1843, at 19.
Louisa (b. 1826) married Robert Izat the same year, 1843, at 17.
During this period, it wasn’t uncommon for young women to marry…young.
Still, one can’t help but wonder: Given their father John Norton’s financial straits during these years, did John pressure Esther, Selina and Louisa to marry ASAP — to get them out from under his roof and thus to lighten his financial load?
An added factor: Both Selina and Louisa married men who were born in England — which, for those daughters, could have created the hope and the expectation that marriage would create a flight path out of South Africa.
If so, it was only Selina whose flight departed promptly. She married in June 1843 and was living in Kent, England, within 6 to 12 months.
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OVER the next several years, other of Selina’s siblings — including Joshua — would join in the geographical exodus from South Africa — although, in some of those cases, the exodus was temporary and followed by a later return.
But, the religious exodus from the Jewish faith of their parents already had begun.
Why, from the perspective of “Norton studies,” does any of this matter? Here’s why:
Published accounts of the young Joshua Norton living in South Africa in his 20s — including the accounts presented by Norton’s major biographers — more or less universally treat Joshua as though he were a romantic hero (or a loner) forging both (a) his views on religion and (b) his desire to leave South Africa within an hermetically sealed vacuum occupied by him, his parents and possibly his two nearest siblings, Louis and Philip.
In this interpretation, Joshua is the only sibling who is asked to answer for apparently having rejected the Jewish faith of his childhood as a young man. Louis, Philip and other siblings are given a pass, because they are regarded as having had an alibi: marrying a “Gentile” in a place where there were few Jews to choose from.
But, who’s to say that these siblings didn’t entitle themselves to marry outside the faith, in part because they, like Joshua, already were pulling away? Norton biographer Bill Drury even goes so far as to say that Joshua’s young adult mockery of Judaism was the first sign of his “madness.” But Drury doesn’t brand Joshua’s fraternal siblings, Louis and Philip, as “mad” for not marrying “a nice Jewish girl” and for getting baptized to boot.
In the following generation, most (all?) of the siblings’ children — presumably with the encouragement and blessing of their parents — were baptized and married by the Anglican Church. So, even if Joshua’s Jewish siblings initially “went Anglican” as “a marriage thing,” their assimilation into the Anglican tradition doesn’t appear to have ended there.
Too: In the prevailing interpretation, Joshua’s primary motivation for leaving South Africa is that his parents and his brothers, Louis and Philip, died between 1846 and 1848, leaving unmarried Joshua to collect a big inheritance check and catch the first ship to San Francisco.
This wishful version of events falls apart, as soon as one realizes that Joshua’s father, John, was declared insolvent as early as 1844 — and that Joshua actually left Cape Town in late 1845, before his parents and brothers had died.
So, one has to look to other sources to help explain Joshua’s “moves” during this period.
One option — and where existing accounts fail — is to recognize that Joshua was one of a dozen siblings — several of whom, in the late 1830s and early 1840s, were hammering out their own attitudes and actions on “religion and travel” at the same time that Joshua was.
It stands to reason that Joshua was influenced by the choices his siblings were making in these areas. Perhaps Joshua and one or two of these siblings confided to one another about all this. A fully realized narrative of Joshua’s life during this period has to position him within this sibling dynamic.
As we’re about to see, the truth is that Joshua Norton was not the only one of his siblings who put some distance between themselves and the Jewish faith of their childhood — and who also got it together to leave South Africa.
He wasn’t even the first — or the last.
Genealogists of the Norton family are familiar with much of what follows.
But, this is a tiny, self-selecting group — and, it’s not clear if any of them has lined up these details in the way that I suggest below.
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ON with our story…
In his two letters of July 1844, John Norton trashes his son Joshua, calling him the “ruin” of the family, but provides no explanation for this verdict.
Fast forward 36 years, when, a few weeks after the death of Emperor Norton in January 1880, a Nathan Peiser — then living in Vallejo, Calif. — stepped forward to tell his local paper a couple of stories of his personal encounters with the former Joshua Norton.
The first was in 1842. After being rescued from a shipwreck off the coast of Cape Town, Peiser was taken in by the Norton family and stayed with them for several months, while he was recovering and getting back on his feet. Joshua was living at home at the time, and, in Peiser’s telling, routinely acted irreverently at family prayer meetings — so much so that, on one occasion, Joshua’s father gave him a stern reprimand.
Based on this story, I had wondered whether the root of John Norton’s grievance against Joshua in 1844 was religious.
In fact, on the matter of fealty to the Jewish faith, other of Joshua’s siblings long since had started voting with their feet.
Esther Norton was the first of the siblings to wed, on 8 August 1838. The marriage, an Anglican ceremony, took place at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. George in Grahamstown.
Marriage record for Esther Norton, 8 August 1843. Church of the Province of South Africa, Parish Registers, 1801–2004. Source: FamilySearch.org
Next to the altar — and the first of the sons to marry — was Philip Norton, who wed at the Cathedral on 15 November 1838. He was baptized at the Cathedral a few days earlier.
Baptism (top) and marriage records for Philip Norton, November 1938. Church of the Province of South Africa, Parish Registers, 1801–2004. Source: FamilySearch.org
Louis Norton, the eldest Norton child, followed the same course in 1842:
Baptism (top) and marriage records for Louis Norton, Nov–Dec 1942. Church of the Province of South Africa, Parish Registers, 1801–2004. Source: FamilySearch.org
Notice that (1) when Esther and Philip wed in August and November 1838, “consent” for these Anglican marriages was given by “the matrimonial court” — and that (2) the only Norton family members listed as being “present” as signed witnesses to Esther’s marriage were siblings Louis Norton, 22, and Selina Norton, 14, with only Selina being present to sign for Philip’s marriage.
By the time Louis wed in 1842, consent was provided by the “parents,” and John Norton signed as a witness.
Did John Norton withhold his blessing of Esther’s and Philip’s marriages in 1838? Indeed, was Selina the oldest member of the Norton family who both was available to serve as a witness to Philip’s marriage and who had no objection to doing so — whether on religious or any other grounds?
What changed for John Norton between 1838 and 1842? It appears that, in 1838, John still had his affairs in order and was thriving as a prosperous and respected member of his community. Perhaps this made him feel more entitled to throw his weight around within the family — whereas, by 1842, when his business and financial world was in crisis and the wheels were starting to come off, he felt he longer was in a position to object to his children’s marriages, including on religious grounds.
Selina had an Anglican marriage of her own — at St. George’s Cathedral, in Cape Town — the following June.
View, c.1890, of the original St. George’s Cathedral, in Cape Town, South Africa, which opened in 1834. This building was demolished in the 1950s, The current Cathedral was constructed between 1904 and 1936. Source: HiltonT@Flickr
Listed as giving his consent and signing as a witness: John Norton.
Marriage record for Selina Jane Norton, 1 June 1843. This document is from South Africa, Civil Marriage Records, 1840–1973. The marriage also is recorded in Church of the Province of South Africa, Parish Registers, 1801–2004. Source: FamilySearch.org
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RECORDS indicate that Selina and her younger sister, Louisa Norton, were wed on the same date — 1 June 1843 — and that Louisa’s marriage, too, had the consent and witness of their father. Double wedding?
Marriage record for Louisa Norton, 1 June 1843. This document is from South Africa, Civil Marriage Records, 1840–1973. The marriage also is recorded in Church of the Province of South Africa, Parish Registers, 1801–2004. Source: FamilySearch.org
Louisa and her husband Robert Izat remained in South Africa, where he died six years later, in November 1849, leaving Louisa with their three children: John, Louisa Elizabeth and George.
Louisa’s mother Sarah Norden had died 3 years earlier, in December 1846. It appears that, when Louisa’s father John departed for London — probably sometime between mid 1847 and early 1848 — in search of funds to pay off his debts and break his financial freefall, he left his youngest child and Louisa’s little sister Mary Ann Norton (or Marianne) — then possibly as young as 15 — in Louisa’s and Robert’s care, where she remained following John Norton’s death in London in August 1848.
Records show that both Louisa and Mary Ann were baptized at St. George’s Cathedral, in Cape Town, on 28 June 1849 — Louisa’s three children all having been baptized at birth.
As early as 1850 and definitely by the time of the 1851 Scotland census, Louisa, her children and Mary Ann were living together in Stirling, Scotland — which apparently is where Selina and her family moved sometime in 1851, after the census had shown them in the Glasgow-adjacent village of Cumbernauld, about 15 miles to the south of Stirling.
Again, one has to ask: Assuming that Selina was the “travel agent” that arranged for her sisters Louisa and Mary Ann to sail from South Africa to Britain and join her in Scotland in 1850–51, did Selina perform a similar, if modified, role to facilitate her brother Joshua’s “flight” from South Africa in 1844–45?
On 20 September 1851, Mary Ann married William Clifford Knight at the Church of St. Mary, Lambeth, in Surrey.
Marriage record for Marianne Norton, 20 September 1851. England, Surrey Parish Registers, 1536–1992. Source: FamilySearch.org
For most of the rest of the 1850s, Louisa and her children continued to live in Stirling.
But, in January 1859, Louisa — then 33 years old — was committed to Saughtonhall House, an “insane” asylum on the west side of Edinburgh.
It’s not clear how long the stay was. But, in April 1872, Louisa was committed again — this time, to Whitehouse asylum, on the east side of Edinburgh.
Louisa died at Whitehouse in January 1873 — a week shy of her 47th birthday.
In January 1873, Louisa’s older brother Joshua — the furthest-flung of the Norton sibling diaspora — had been living in San Francisco for 23 years and had been Emperor of the United States for 13 of those years.
As to religion: The Emperor had worked out an approach that didn’t choose between synagogue and church but took the best from both.
Maybe that’s an approach that his sisters and brothers could have identified with.
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