Early Years of SF Morning Call Newspaper Now Online in Project Jump-Started by The Emperor Norton Trust
Arrival of 26-Year Cache of Major Daily’s Editions from 1863 to 1889 Closes a Longstanding Documentary Gap and Opens New Access
Includes Coverage of Emperor Norton and Items by Mark Twain
RESEARCHERS of early San Francisco are well served by historical newspaper clearinghouses like Newspapers.com, Genealogy Bank, and the California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC).
Between these three databases, historians can find nearly-complete collections of the earliest mid-to-late-19th-century decades of the Daily Alta California, Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and others— in the case of the Alta, dating back to 1849.
A notable outlier has been the Morning Call.
Founded as the Daily Morning Call in December 1856…
Banner of Daily Morning Call, 13 December 1863, p. 1. Source: Newspapers.com
…and simplifying a bit to The Morning Call in December 1878…
Banner of The Morning Call, 28 December 1878, p. 1. Source: Newspapers.com
the Call has been available online at Newspapers.com and CDNC — starting with the edition of 1 April 1890.
But the only way to access earlier editions has been via microfiche or the original deadwood.
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LAST SUMMER, I was able to determine that microfiched editions of the Call date back to December 1863 — more than 26 years EARLIER than April 1890.
So, in September 2024 — writing on behalf of The Emperor Norton Trust…
I emailed BRIAN GEIGER — then-director of CDNC — to ask why these earlier editions of the Call never had been brought online — and whether they might be added to CDNC now.
Brian noted that the Call was one of CDNC’s first digitization projects, in the early 2000s. He explained that the decision at the time to start in 1890 was driven, in part, by capacity — not an issue now.
Brian went on to say that, as opportunities multiplied to bring more and more papers online, CDNC did not revisit the possibility of adding the earlier editions — but that there was no particular intention in this.
Brian quickly agreed to add to CDNC’s agenda the digitization and publication of the 1863–1890 editions of the Call — explaining that things would proceed according to the protocol of CDNC’s partnership with Newspapers.com:
CDNC requests the digitization from Newspapers.com.
Newspapers.com performs the digitization and places the papers on its own site.
The papers are available at CDNC 2–3 years later.
He expected that the editions should be available at Newspapers.com sometime in spring 2025.
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ANYONE schooled in the travails of CDNC over the last year will not be surprised that things did not move quite as promptly as Brian Geiger hoped.
But, every historian of early San Francisco and California should be gratified by the note from Brian that arrived in my Emperor Norton Trust inbox on 11 August 2025.
Referring to the early editions of the Call, Brian wrote:
Those titles were on the very last appendix I signed with Newspapers.com in June.
The titles arrived on Newspapers.com in September 2025:
Daily Morning Call — 8 December 1863 – 20 December 1878
The Morning Call — 21 December 1878 – 31 December 1889
Important to note: For browsing and search purposes, Newspapers.com has these early editions under “San Francisco Call Bulletin” — a category that also includes editions though 1956.
Newspapers.com subscribers who seek targeted access to the newly added early editions of the Call will need to add a newspaper filter for “San Francisco Call Bulletin” and use the relevant date parameters. Search results that include these editions will be listed as “San Francisco Call Bulletin” — but results within the relevant date parameters will click through to scanned editions of the Daily Morning Call or The Morning Call.
The early editions include Mark Twain’s writing for the Daily Morning Call between June and October 1864.
Of course, what most interests the Trust — and why we made our request to CDNC last year — is that these early editions of the Call include coverage of the Emperor Norton that nearly everyone — including us — will never have seen before.
We look forward to sharing our findings.