Emperor Norton the Convener

October 10, 2026 / John Lumea

A certain conventional wisdom characterizes — and caricatures — Emperor Norton as an imperious, high-handed blusterer with something of a dictator complex.

But a countervailing body of evidence shows that, on matters that the Emperor saw as being of greatest consequence, his impulse often was not to try to rule by fiat — but rather to call on recognized leaders to gather at specified location a few months hence; organize themselves as a council; and chart the most productive specific path forward within the general parameters that he had set.

Or, on occasion, the Emperor cast himself in a supporting role by offering himself as a neutral diplomat to broker a peace between disputing parties.

Presented here are four examples showing how Emperor Norton’s insistence on a well-ordered and just society arose from the instincts of a thoughtful reformer seeking to bring together leaders for the purpose of influencing and leveraging their collective agendas and actions — and that he was not the cartoon autocrat of “weird history” podcasts and drive-by social media reels.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / convener, assembly, council, convention, Constitution, Mexico, Civil War, Modoc War, reform, diplomacy, 1859, 1860, 1866, 1873

Emperor Norton's Overdue Notices

October 06, 2026 / John Lumea

Certain themes come up again and again in the Proclamations of Emperor Norton. The Emperor’s demand for revised or completely new national and California state Constitutions, for example. Or his insistence on being provided with accommodations or clothing better suited to his status as Emperor.

Most often, when the Emperor returns to an earlier theme, he simply issues a fresh iteration of the imperative that reads as though he is stating it for the first time.

Sometimes, though, he makes a point of referencing his original Proclamation on the subject, as if to say: “I shouldn’t have to repeat myself, but your inaction on the matter leaves me with no other choice.”

In at least one documented case, the Emperor issued a Proclamation on a matter more than a decade after he initially stated his policy on it.

This latter practice suggests that Emperor Norton had a good memory. It also raises interesting questions about what kind of records the Emperor might have kept about his Proclamations and their publication history.

Presented here are three examples, together with a few concluding thoughts on the question of imperial record keeping.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / memory, record, reminder, long game, bridge, streetcars, public access, civil rights, water preparedness, drought, irrigation, 1864, 1871, 1872, 1877, personal effects, papers, scrapbooks, 1880

Three Times That Newspapers Used the Farallon Islands to Lampoon Emperor Norton

September 30, 2026 / John Lumea

In mid August 1869, the transcontinental railroad had been completed for three months. The first passengers would not arrive in Oakland for another three weeks. But, with Oakland slated as the terminus, San Francisco was understandably nervous about the prospect of being cut off from the new railroad by a wide and bridgeless bay.

Seeking to exploit these anxieties, the Oakland Daily News published a satirical piece — in the form of a Proclamation of Emperor Norton, complete with a “Norton I” signature, but clearly a hoax and a prank — that had the Emperor calling for an absurd “bridge to nowhere” that not only bypassed San Francisco altogether but that pursued a meandering path “from…Oakland Point, from thence to the mountain range of Saucilleto and from thence to the Farallones” — a rocky outcropping of mostly uninhabitable islands and stacks 28 miles to the east of San Francisco’s Pacific coast.

This fake decree is the best-known example of a newspaper using “the Farallones” as a rhetorical device to skewer and scale down the empire of Norton I.

But it’s not the only example.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Farallon Islands, Farallone Islands, Farallons, Farallones, newspapers, satire, humor, comedy, Oakland Daily News, Daily Alta California, Visalia Delta Weekly, bridge, imperial palace, title, 1861, 1865, 1869

In 15 Years at the Eureka Lodgings, Emperor Norton Had Two Landlords, But "the Management" Ran Through One Family

June 22, 2026 / John Lumea

From 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.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Places
tags / Aaron Babcock, Eva May Babcock, Eva Hutchinson, David Hutchinson, Eureka Lodgings, 624 Commercial, ancestry, marriage, census, 1836, 1854, 1864, 1865, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1870, 1880, landlord, proprietor

The Real Beginning of the End of Emperor Norton's Stand at the Pacific Appeal

June 02, 2026 / John Lumea

Between 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.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Proclamations
tags / Charles R. Peters, Charles Peters, Newark, real estate, fraud, immigrants, Oakland Tribune, Pacific Appeal, Peter Anderson, lawsuit, libel, 1875

A 19th-Century Artist Credited With Four Depictions of Emperor Norton — Each of Them Different

April 10, 2026 / John Lumea

Cartoonists 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.

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categories / Research, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Art, engraving, sketch, cartoon, George Holbrook Baker, Snooks Jr., Mechanics' Institute, Bummer, Patriotic Order Sons of America, inscription, authorship, attribution, artist, lithographer, 1849, 1853, 1862, 1864, 1865, 1860s, 1870s, 1874, 1877, 1878, 1889, 1891

In 1862, Emperor Norton Signed a Petition Supporting Anti-Party Politics

March 30, 2026 / John Lumea

By 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.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / politics, independent, anti-party, no party, People's Party, Democratic Party, Second Committee of Vigilance, petition, signature, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 1855, 1856, 1858, 1859, 1862, 1869, 1875, 1876

So What, If Emperor Norton Had a Sweet Tooth?

February 24, 2026 / John Lumea

In 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.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / drinking, candy, memory, pioneer, profile, interview, letter to the editor, James Giusto, Jimmy Giusto, George Murphy, bartender, bar, saloon, tobacconist, 1856, 1861, 1879, 1886, 1936

Contributors to Humanities Journals in France and England Took Note of Emperor Norton in 1937

February 18, 2026 / John Lumea

In 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.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / journal, magazine, L’Intermédiare des Chercheurs et Curieux, Notes and Queries, L’Est Illustré, L’Est Republicain, Paris, London, Oxford, Lorraine, Gabriel Liber, H.F., M.H. Dodds, M. Hope Dodds, humanities, scholar, 1937

News of Emperor Norton Reaches Russia-Owned Alaska in 1866

January 28, 2026 / John Lumea

Between 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.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / The Esquimaux, journal, newspaper, monthly, John J. Harrington, humor, Western Union, telegraph, Bering Strait, Russian America, North East Siberia, Port Clarence, Libbysville, Plover Bay, Charles S. Bulkley, Daniel B. Libby, Daily Morning Call, T. Grob, 1860, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866, 1867, Alaska

The Ubiquitous But Enigmatic Life of An Early Engraving of Emperor Norton

January 18, 2026 / John Lumea

Surely 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.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / engraving, cut, printing, printer, scrip, bond, promissory note, Cuddy & Hughes, John Cuddy, Edward C. Hughes, Charles A. Murdock, photograph, Bradley & Rulofson, Columbia, seal, 1869, 1870, 1871, 1876, 1878, 1879

Emperor Norton in Mourning

January 08, 2026 / John Lumea

In 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.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / photograph, Victorian, death, mourning, custom, etiquette, armband, crape, crepe, Mercedes of Orléans, Spain, Queen, Queen Consort, Bradley & Rulofson, San Francisco Chronicle, 1878

An Editor Whose Coverage of Emperor Norton Extended Beyond the Pages of His Newspaper

December 08, 2025 / John Lumea

Probably 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?

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Albert S. Evans, Daily Alta California, editor, book, Our Sister Republic, travelogue, memoir, Mexico, William H. Seward, stories, tales, fake, Pacific Appeal, Frederick Coombs, Freddy Coombs, George Washington II, 1864, 1865, 1866, 1867, 1869, 1870, 1871, Mechanics' Institute

Joshua Norton, Street Fighter?

November 20, 2025 / John Lumea

In 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.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Joshua Norton, assault, McKinley, Johnson, McKinley Johnson & Co., John W. Geary, alcalde, memory, Henry B. Livingston, Daily Alta California, Overland Monthly, letter to the editor, Society of California Pioneers, 1850, 1887

Emperor Norton Was Tuned in to Women's Suffrage Years Before He Signed an 1878 Petition in Favor of It

November 18, 2025 / John Lumea

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.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Places
tags / woman, women, suffrage, vote, convention, petition, signature, California Woman Suffrage Association, Pacific Slope Woman Suffrage Convention, Pacific Hall, Pacific Music Hall, California Theatre, California Theater, Lyceum of Self-Culture, Common Sense (journal), 1869, 1870, 1871, 1874, 1878, California Constitutional Convention of 1878–79

Who First Marketed and Sold Eadweard Muybridge's Photograph of Emperor Norton on a Velocipede?

October 30, 2025 / John Lumea

Among 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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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / photograph, photography, Eadweard Muybridge, Helios, Mechanics' Pavilion, velocipede, agent, representative, Charles Gray Ewing, Silas Selleck, Charles Nahl, Arthur Nahl, Nahl Brothers, gallery, Daily Morning Call, 1868, 1869

Early Years of SF Morning Call Newspaper Now Online in Project Jump-Started by The Emperor Norton Trust

October 26, 2025 / John Lumea

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 and simplifying a bit to The Morning Call in December 1878, 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 of the Call has been via microfiche or the original deadwood.

The culmination of a digitization project that was jump-started by The Emperor Norton Trust a year ago — in September 2024 — the following 26 years’ worth of the early Call arrived on Newspapers.com last month:

Daily Morning Call — 8 December 1863 – 20 December 1878
The Morning Call — 21 December 1878 – 31 December 1889

This

closes a significant longstanding documentary gap in the online historical newspaper record;
opens up a new avenue of research into the life of Emperor Norton — and early San Francisco history more broadly; and — a notable bonus…
creates new access to the editions of the Daily Morning Call that carried Mark Twain’s writing between June and October 1864.

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categories / Research, Original sources, News
tags / newspapers, database, public access, Daily Morning Call, The Morning Call, Morning Call, San Francisco Morning Call, Newspapers.com, California Digital Newspaper Collection, Brian Geiger, Mark Twain, 1856, 1863, 1889, 1890

Emperor Norton and the Art of Adaptive Begging

October 24, 2025 / John Lumea

In general. the question of how Emperor Norton raised money to help support himself is answered with reference to two imaginary-yet-real projects of world making:

collecting from specific friends and former business associates “taxes” due the Imperial Government of Norton I
“selling” to the general public promissory notes backed by said Government

Rarely if ever mentioned is the possibility that the Emperor also, at times, was reduced to garden-variety street panhandling.

But there is at least some anecdotal evidence to suggest that he was.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / begging, panhandling, tax collecting, promissory notes, charity, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, The Argonaut, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, William Drury, 1863, 1880, 1986

Joshua Norton Posthumously Reinstated as a Mason After 167 Years

September 04, 2025 / John Lumea

On 21 August 1854, Joshua Norton was inducted as a member of Occidental Lodge No. 22 of Free and Accepted Masons.

A little less than four years later, on 15 June 1858, Joshua was "suspended for non-payment of dues" from Occidental 22.

In 1975, Occidental 22 merged in with the San Francisco-based California Lodge No. 1 of F. & A.M. — the oldest Masonic lodge in California — after which Occidental 22 ceased to exist as a separate lodge.

In June 2024, The Emperor Norton Trust suggested to California 1 that it explore the possibility of posthumously reinstating Joshua Norton and forgiving his unpaid dues.

A year later, on 3 June 2025, California 1 did just that.

Of course, there were a few more twists and turns.

This is the story of a homecoming.

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categories / Research, Original sources, News, Legacy, Tributes
tags / Mason, Masonic, Occidental Lodge No. 22, California Lodge No. 1, suspension, reinstatement, John Bermudez, Marcelo Pontin, Keaton Nguyen, plaque, Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco Historical Society, Todd Mayberry, Lana Costantini, Richard Everett, Seven Hills Lodge No. 881, Phoenix Lodge No. 144, Oriental Lodge No. 144, Thomas Starr King, 1854, 1859, 1860, 1861, 2024, 2025

Is This Really Joshua Norton?

July 16, 2025 / John Lumea

For nearly a century, the collection of the Society of California Pioneers has included a photograph whose subject has been identified — including by the authors of the two published biographies of Emperor Norton and by The Emperor Norton Trust — as Joshua Abraham Norton.

There are many good reasons for believing that the gentleman in the photo is not, in fact, Joshua Norton — and no good reasons, it seems, for continuing to believe that it is.

Herewith, a reassessment.

3 Likes

categories / Research, Original sources
tags / photograph, Society of California Pioneers, Charles Beebe Turrill, daguerrotype, collodion, fashion, jacket, beard, friendly muttonchops, hulihee, Civil War, Ambrose Burnside, Kalakaua, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, 1851, 1861, 1869, 1871, 1878, 1927, 1928, 1939, 1986

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