A Business Associate of 1851 Appears to Have Come to Joshua’s Aid When He Was on the Brink of Bankruptcy in 1855

JOSHUA NORTON and Peter Robertson announced the end of their business partnership with a dissolution notice that was dated 21 October 1851 and published in the Daily Alta California newspaper in the first week of November.

**Notice of dissolution of business partnership of Joshua Norton and Peter Robertson**, *Daily Alta California*, 2 November 1851, p. 4. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

There is evidence to suggest that Norton and Robertson had met in San Francisco in October 1850; possibly, they forged their partnership shortly afterwards.

The fact that, by October 1851, the partnership was operating as two different namesake firms in two different locations — Joshua Norton & Co. in San Francisco, Peter Robertson & Co. in Marysville — suggests that, by this time, the partnership may have become a marriage of business convenience in which each partner was free to pursue other business associations as his personal needs and interests dictated.

Quickly finding a new business partner, Peter Robertson (1822–1854) continued as a commission merchant in Marysville, maintaining his previous focus on Chile flour.

A few months later, in March 1852, Robertson’s warehouse was destroyed in a flood. Announcing the completion of a “[n]ew and commodious fire and rat-proof Iron Warehouse” with enough space to add a storage business, Robertson ran an ad starting in July 1852 that included a list of references. The conspicuous absence of Joshua Norton’s name suggests that the two may not have parted on the best of terms.

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A TURNING POINT in the business relationship between Joshua Norton and Peter Robertson may have been the San Francisco fire of 3–4 May 1851.

A few days later, a 3-day ad appeared in the Daily Alta noting that B.H. Hunter of the Chile Flour Company “will attend to any offers for flour for account of Joshua Norton & Co., Mr. Norton having gone up the River for a few days.”

The need for such a notice suggests that Robertson was not around to mind the San Francisco shop in Norton’s absence. Perhaps he already had decamped to Marysville.

**Ad noting that Joshua Norton has "gone up the River for a few days,"** *Daily Alta California*, 9 May 1851, p. 4. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

The River in question was the Sacramento River. A month later, Joshua was back “up” it, with his presence on a 3 June 1851 arrivals list for the Sutter Hotel, in Sacramento, confirming his destination.

**Joshua Norton among "Arrivals at Sutter Hotel, June 3" (fourth line),** *Sacramento Transcript*, 4 June 1851, p. 2. Source: Genealogy Bank

The following detail from an 1850 drawing of Sacramento following a flood shows that the Sutter Hotel was just two doors down from the auction house of J.B. Starr.

**Detail from "View of Sacramento City as it appeared during the great inundation in January 1850," lithograph by George W. Casilear, Henry Bainbridge and Napoleon Sarony, c.1850.** Collection of the California State Library. Source: Calisphere

It was James Blackwell “J.B.” Starr (1810–1862) that Joshua Norton had come to see,

Three weeks after Joshua’s trip to Sacramento in early June 1851, the following ad for a Sacramento River packet service between Sacramento and San Francisco — jointly run by J.B. Starr and Joshua Norton — appeared in the Sacramento Daily Union.

Apparently, it was Starr who brought the schooner Eudorus to the table.

**Ad for Sacramento River packet service jointly run by J.B. Starr in Sacramento and Joshua Norton in San Francisco**, *The Daily Union* (Sacramento, Calif.), 25 June 1851, p. 2. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

James Lick’s adobe at 242 Montgomery Street (Jackson), San Francisco — where the office of Joshua Norton & Co. had been located since late May 1850 — was lost in the fire of May 1851.

Joshua’s ad and, apparently, his arrangement with J.B. Starr ran for only a couple of weeks in late June and early July of that year — perhaps just long enough for him to regroup and find new business digs, probably in the vicinity of Jackson Street between Battery and Montgomery.

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NOTWITHSTANDING the fire of May 1851, Joshua Norton’s “Sacramento strategy” of May–July 1851 took place in the context of his continuing rise as a commodities trader in San Francisco.

Things were much different four years later. In October 1854, the California Supreme Court ruled against Joshua in his rice contract dispute with the Peruvian consignment firm of Ruiz Hermanos. And in the second week of May 1855, the Fourth District Court set the financial terms of Joshua’s loss: $20,000.

**Item reporting the final award in the case of Ruiz v. Norton, *Daily Placer Times and Transcript*, 11 May 1855**, p. 2. (Note: The name of José Maria Ruiz is misspelled “Reivy.”) Source: Genealogy Bank

It was against this backdrop that, a couple of weeks later — on 26 May 1855 — Joshua Norton started running the following ad seeking to buy wool — a commodity with which he previously had not been associated.

**Ad (buying wool) by Joshua Norton at No. 5, Merchants’ Exchange,** *Daily Placer Times & Transcript*, 26 May 1855. p. 2. Source; Genealogy Bank

In late May 1855, Joshua wasn’t exactly in a position to pay “the highest market price” for any commodity. So, it’s notable that the same ad, from the same address — No. 5, Merchants’ Exchange — in the same paper was run by Emil Grisar of Grisar, Byrne & Co. starting about a week earlier, on 18 May 1855:

**Ad (buying wool) by E. Grisar of Grisar, Byrne & Co. at No. 5, Merchants’ Exchange,** *Daily Placer Times & Transcript*, 21 May 1855, p. 2. Source: Genealogy Bank

In fact: Several weeks later, on 27 July 1855, two versions of virtually the same wool-buying ad — both issued on 26 May — appeared within a column inch or so of one another: one listing Grisar, Byrne & Co., the other listing Joshua Norton.

**Ads (buying wool) for Grisar, Byrne & Co. and Joshua Norton at No. 5, Merchants’ Exchange,** *Daily Placer Times & Transcript*, 27 July 1855, p. 4. Source: Genealogy Bank

In 1855, Grisar, Byrne & Co. — not Joshua Norton — was the going concern.

In light of this, one reasonable interpretation of the newspaper record is that, in early to mid 1855, Grisar, Byrne & Co. helped Joshua Norton through a difficult time

(a) by allowing him to use their address and / or their space at the Merchants’ Exchange — possibly also

(b) by engaging Joshua as a kind of “freelance” merchant for their wool trade.

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THE PREVIOUS SECTION summarizes the “wool episode” that I discovered, researched, and reported in September 2023, in the context of a larger piece about Joshua Norton’s association with the new Merchants’ Exchange, on Battery between Washington and Jackson Streets.

In recent days, I stumbled upon evidence of another actor in the episode: J.B. Starr.

The following ad started running in the Sacramento Daily Union on 28 May 1855 — a week-and-a-half after the first wool-buying ad from Emil Grisar starting on May 18 and two days after similar ads from Grisar, Byrne & Co. and from Joshua Norton starting on May 26.

**Ad from Joshua Norton and J.B. Starr seeking wool to buy**, *Sacramento Daily Union*, 28 May 1855, p. 2. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

What’s distinctive about this ad: Starr goes further than Grisar, Byrne & Co. — venturing his own reputation by embracing the down-and-nearly-out Joshua Norton at the level of placing their names together in the same ad.

Indeed, although it clearly is Starr who placed the ad, he gives Joshua top billing.

Although it’s obvious that all of these ads are coordinated, the timing of Emil Grisar’s ad of 18 May 1855 relative to the later ads suggests that the wool promotion started with Grisar, Byrne & Co.

But how did things proceed from there?

Did Joshua Norton ask Grisar et al. to be dealt in? Or did they invite him to join?
Did Joshua ask J.B. Starr to join? Or were Starr and the Grisar partners business colleagues working out their own arrangement to help a friend?
Assuming that Joshua was not leading the effort or risking his own money, what kind of commission was he being offered to bring in wool suppliers? Who would pay the commission? Grisar? Starr? A split?

Starr’s ad of 28 May on the heels of the Grisar, Byrne & Co.’s and Joshua’s ads of 26 May suggests the possibility of an agreement that was negotiated in advance of the earlier ads.

Was this done by mail?
Was there a meeting involving Grisar et al. and Starr in San Francisco? In Sacramento?
Did such a meeting take place before the ads of the 26th — or was it on the 26th or 27th?
Was Joshua a party to such a meeting? Or was he simply informed of his position within an agreement hammered out by others?

Whichever are the particulars, it’s clear that J.B. Starr of Sacramento was one of a number of Joshua Norton’s friends and former business associates who, in early to mid 1855, were trying to help rescue him from a situation that would only get worse when he was forced to declare bankruptcy a year later, in August 1856.

Arguably, in light of the Sacramento River packet service that Starr agreed to run with Joshua in the wake of the San Francisco fire of May 1851, this was the second time that Starr had thrown Joshua a lifeline.

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A Business Associate of 1851 Appears to Have Come to Joshua’s Aid When He Was on the Brink of Bankruptcy in 1855