Four Previously Unpublished Photographs of the Emperor Norton Reburial Ceremony of 1934

December 12, 2024 / John Lumea

In response to the early 1930s closure and clearing of San Francisco's Masonic Cemetery, where Emperor Norton had been buried in 1880, a group of business and civic leaders who were members of the Pacific–Union Club came together in early 1934 and formed the Emperor Norton Memorial Association for the purpose of securing a new grave site and headstone for the Emperor.

Following the Emperor's April 1934 reburial in a plot the Association had purchased in Woodlawn Cemetery, Colma, Calif., the Association held a public dedication ceremony at the grave site on Saturday 30 June 1934.

It appears that, with a couple of exceptions, all of the newspaper coverage of this event that included photography featured one — very occasionally both — of two specific uncredited photos.

This week, we discovered that the photographs were taken by San Francisco Examiner staff photographer George Elmer Sheldon and that Sheldon actually took 6 photographs that day — including 4 photos that apparently were never published.

All 6 photographs were part of a 2006 donation of some 5 million photos from the San Francisco Examiner's photo morgue, c.1930–2000, to the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

As of February 2024, only about 22,000 of these photographs had been digitized and made available via the Berkeley Library Digital Collections website.

Happily, George Sheldon's 6 photographs of the June 1934 dedication ceremony for Emperor Norton’s reburial and headstone are among these.

According to Berkeley Library's viewing statistics for its Digital Collections page for this group of photographs, the photos have been viewed via the page only a handful of times since October 2021 — which presumably corresponds to when the photos went live on the page.

We present all 6 photographs here. We believe this is the first time the four unpublished photos of the ceremony — including a lovely capture of Golden Gate Park superintendent John McLaren helping to unveil the Emperor's new headstone — have been published outside the Berkeley database.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / photograph, photographs, photographer, grave, reburial, headstone, Woodlawn Cemetery, Emperor Norton Memorial Association, Ernest Wiltsee, John McLaren, William Henry Crocker, Robert Ernest Cowan, San Francisco Examiner, George E. Sheldon, Bancroft Library, Charles A. Shurtleff, unpublished, 1932, 1934, 2006

Herb Caen Bought the Myth that Bummer and Lazarus Were Emperor Norton's Dogs

December 02, 2024 / John Lumea

In 1984, Malcolm E. Barker published his little book, Bummer and Lazarus: San Francisco’s Famous Dogs, about the free-range canine friends and ratters of the early 1860s who were so beloved that the city’s Board of Supervisors exempted them from its severe dog-culling policy — and who subsequently were immortalized in cartoons of this period by Edward Jump and others.

The book includes Barker’s finding — since widely accepted — that there is no contemporaneous evidence supporting the persistent, wishful claim that Bummer and Lazarus were Emperor Norton’s dogs — rather, that the association between the Emperor and the dogs is just another of the many later apocryphal legends attaching to the Emp.

Sometime in the 13-year period between the publication of Barker’s book and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen’s death in 1997, Caen praised the book as “a wonderful addition to the shelf of Sanfriscana.”

But, for some four decades in the mid 20th century, Caen was among those who quietly but persistently gave oxygen to the urban myth that Emperor Norton owned Bummer and Lazarus.

Documented here are six examples from 1948 to 1985.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Bummer & Lazarus, Herb Caen, Malcolm Barker, Anne Bancroft, Guinness Book of World Records, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, 1948, 1950, 1953, 1964, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1984, 1985, 1996, 2001

Charting a Path to "Frisco" in 1849

November 14, 2024 / John Lumea

In 1939, David Warren Ryder published a brief “book,” San Francisco’s Emperor Norton, in which Ryder claimed — without any evidence — that Emperor Norton issued a proclamation against the use of the word “Frisco” for San Francisco. According to Ryder, the Emperor wrote that “Frisco” had “no linguistic or other warrant.”

Leaving aside Ryder’s contentious — and still unproven — claim of imperial authorship for this so-called proclamation, the embedded claim that “Frisco” has no “linguistic warrant”…warrants scrutiny.

Recently, I uncovered the ship journal of Isaac Wallis Baker, who captained the bark San Francisco on its Gold Rush voyage from Beverly, Mass., to San Francisco between August 1849 and January 1850.

In one entry from December 1849, written aboard the San Francisco when the ship was in the Pacific off northern Mexico, Baker pens a poem in which the opening verse rhymes “Francisco” with a riff that points to an obsolete 16th-century word, “frisco,” that the Oxford English Dictionary gives two meanings: (a) “a brisk movement in dancing; a caper,” and (b) “a term of endearment.”

Baker’s journal was documented in 1923 — but it appears that this entry has remained buried and unnoted for the last century.

If you like “Frisco,” you’re gonna love this.

Even if not, you’ll learn something new!

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / name, nickname, term of endearment, Frisco, frisk, friskoe, El Fresco, frip-socn, Yerba Buena, San Francisco, Oh! Susanna, Bark Eliza, John Nichols, The California Emigrant, Oh! California, I Come from Salem City, journal, Oxford English Dictionary, Stephen Foster, Isaac Wallis Baker, Bark San Francisco, Octavius Thorndike Howe, Perez Mann Batchelder, Richard Brome, J.D.B. Stillman, Society of California Pioneers, Salem Massachusetts, Beverly Massachusetts, Peter Tamony, Salem Gazette, Boston Daily Bee, Placer Times, 1519, 1636, 1659, 1847, 1848, 1849, 1850, 1852, 1853, 1874

When Emperor Norton Became Protector of Mexico

October 18, 2024 / John Lumea

A certain conventional wisdom holds that Emperor Norton adopted the title "Protector of Mexico" around the time French emperor Napoleon III invaded Mexico in 1862 and installed his puppet ruler Maximilian I in 1864 — and that the Emperor dropped his "Protector" title a few years later.

The documentary record says otherwise.

Evidence suggests that Emperor Norton did not start using "Protector of Mexico" until early 1866, more than halfway into Maximilian’s tenure, but makes clear that he kept using the title — both to advocate for Mexico and for general purposes — for the rest of his life.

A surprising find: Norton I expanded his title to "Emperor of the United States and Mexico" in 1861.

By the time the Emperor assumed his protectorship of Mexico, he had relinquished his emperorship of that country.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / Mexico, Emperor of the United States and Mexico, Protector of Mexico, Napoleon III, Maximilian I, Robert Ernest Cowan, Albert Dressler, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, Emperor Norton Memorial Association, Woodlawn Cemetery, headstone, 1860, 1861, 1862, 1864, 1865, 1866, 1871, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1879, 1923, 1927, 1934, 1938, 1939, 1986

When Did the Reign of Emperor Norton Really Begin?

October 14, 2024 / John Lumea

Joshua Norton's Proclamation of 17 September 1859 declaring himself "Emperor of these United States" would appear to settle the question of when Emperor Norton’s reign was inaugurated.

Except.

Except for a line that Emperor Norton attaches to his signature to several of his Proclamations of the 1860s, in which the Emperor specifies that a given Proclamation was issued “in the [X]th year of our reign.”

Assuming, for example, that a Proclamation that Emperor Norton signed “in the 16th year of our reign” was one he issued between the 15th and 16th anniversaries of his reign…

The “math” that the Emperor uses in these little clauses strongly suggests that he may have thought of himself as being Emperor for at least 4 years — and for as much as 7 years — before he declared it publicly in 1859.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / reign, year of our reign, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1859, 1864, 1865, 1869

Joshua Norton on the Sacramento River

September 24, 2024 / John Lumea

Among the buildings destroyed in the San Francisco fire of May 1851 was James Lick's adobe at 242 Montgomery Street, where Joshua Norton's office had been located since May 1850.

In the wake of the fire, Joshua made at least two trips up the Sacramento River and met with prominent Sacramento auctioneer and commission merchant James Blackwell "J.B." Starr (1810–1862). In June 1851, Starr and Norton started offering a packet service between Sacramento and San Francisco using a schooner apparently brought to the table by Starr.

It was a very brief arrangement, lasting about long enough for Joshua to regroup and find new office space in San Francisco.

Four years later, in early May 1855, the Fourth District Court of California set the financial terms of Joshua's California Supreme Court loss in his rice contract dispute with the consignment firm of Ruiz Hermanos: $20,000.

Two weeks after this, J.B. Starr joined a wool-buying promotion that included Joshua Norton — and that appears to have been designed by former business associates of Joshua to help him through a difficult time and to show that he was not friendless.

It was the second time that Starr had thrown Joshua a lifeline.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / J.B. Starr, James Blackwell Starr, Grisar Byrne & Co., Emile Grisar, Peter Robertson, Sacramento, Sacramento River, Marysville Calif., packet service, schooner, Eudorus, wool, Sutter Hotel, San Francisco fire of 1851, 1850, 1851, 1854, 1855

Music Had Charms for the Emperor Norton

September 10, 2024 / John Lumea

Emperor Norton's reign in San Francisco coincided with the advent and growth of opera in his adopted city.

In one of the Emperor's earlier Proclamations, published in December 1865, he enjoins his subjects to attend and support the opera, writing: "The man that has no music in his soul is fit for Treason, Strategem, and Spoils. Let no such man be trusted....The Nation that supports music shows an advancement in Civilization and Refinement."

In April 1872, Emperor Norton returns to these themes in a Proclamation that focuses on a specific company, the Bianchi troupe, that had been identified with opera in San Francisco for nearly 15 years — but now was failing.

Several episodes in the Bianchi story illustrate the challenges that beset the enterprise of opera in San Francisco during this period — challenges that lay at the heart of the Emperor's recognition that, in order for any opera troupe to nourish the public soul, it first must succeed as a business enterprise.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Places, Original sources
tags / music, opera, theater, Bianchi, Eugenio Bianchi, Giovanna Bianchi, Maguire's Opera House, Academy of Music (Oakland), Tom Maguire, John Maguire, 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861, 1862, 1865, 1872

Scenes from the Emperor Norton Devotion of Melvin Belli

August 16, 2024 / John Lumea

The legendary San Francisco attorney Melvin Mouron Belli (1907–1996) was — among many other things — an enthusiast of the Emperor Norton.

No doubt, this — and Melvin Belli’s way with a pen — is why William Drury enlisted Belli to write the Foreword for his 1986 biography of the Emperor.

Throughout his very public life, Belli repeatedly and habitually associated himself with Emperor Norton.

As shown in the scenes documented here...

an Emperor Norton cosplayer who "knighted" Belli at the 1960 Belli-staged dedication of two Gold Rush-era buildings that Belli had restored — one of which he would use for his law office
Belli's own cosplaying of the Emperor for a San Francisco Examiner magazine feature in 1987
Belli's interviews comparing public birthday parties he threw for himself in 1982 and 1987 to imagined birthday celebrations for Emperor Norton in the Emperor's day

...Belli invoked the Emperor in ways that suggested a link between his fight for justice and his flair for the eccentric.

Indeed, Belli's Norton-flavored theatrics helped his audiences to see that — as with Emperor Norton — his own eccentricity was a key to his influence.

Click below for stories, photographs, newspaper clippings, and video.

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categories / Research, Places, Legacy, Original sources
tags / Melvin Belli, Belli Building, Genella Building, 722 Montgomery, 728 Montgomery, cosplay, cosplayer, Earle Wright, birthday party, Mike Douglas Show, San Francisco Examiner, William Drury, 1959, 1960, 1982, 1986, 1987

Two of the Earliest Sightings of Emperor Norton in Regalia

August 06, 2024 / John Lumea

In September 2020, The Emperor Norton Trust uncovered a San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin article from 26 May 1860 reporting that Emperor Norton had “again donned his epaulettes” for the previous evening’s promenade on San Francisco’s Montgomery Street.

The suggestion was that the Emperor had been seen wearing epaulettes before. But, the May 1860 article was — and has remained — the earliest documented sighting of the Emperor wearing his uniform in public.

Of course, the “best available evidence” is the “best” only until it is supplanted by something better.

This past week, we found two such pieces of evidence: contemporaneous reports of Emperor Norton wearing a uniform in March of 1860 — two months earlier than our previous finding indicated.

In one report, the Emperor debuted his new regalia during the St. Patrick’s Day festivities of 17 March 1860.

In another, he wore it to a performance of Richard III that was staged at Maguire’s Opera House, Washington Street, on 28 March 1860.

Part of the new documentation is a superb lengthy letter from the San Francisco correspondent of the Mountain Democrat newspaper of Placerville, Calif. — about “the movements of Joshua Norton.” The letter is worth the price of admission!

Click below for details.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / uniform, regalia, regimentals, epaulettes, sword, St. Patrick's Day, Maguire's Opera House, William Credulous, The Mountain Democrat, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 1860

The Papers Outside San Francisco That Published Emperor Norton's Original Proclamation

August 02, 2024 / John Lumea

It appears that the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin was the only San Francisco paper that ran Joshua Norton’s Proclamation of 17 September 1859 declaring himself “Emperor of these United States.”

But, it turns out that there were six other papers outside San Francisco that published the Proclamation as news during the 2½-month period from mid September to early December 1859.

Three of these six papers were in Northern California. Two were in the South. And one was on the East Coast.

Only one of the six — the Daily National Democrat of Marysville, Calif. — published verbatim the text that appeared in the Bulletin, including the Bulletin’s editorial headline and introduction.

The other five papers all featured some combination of a different headline; no headline; or a different intro text.

Click below to see the Proclamation as it appeared — and the Emperor as he was introduced — in each of these six newspapers. If other examples surface, we’ll add them here.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Places, Original sources
tags / Original Proclamation, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, Sacramento Calif., Marysville Calif., Red Bluff Calif., New Orleans, Vicksburg Miss., Hartford Conn., 1859

Joshua Norton On His Way Out of the Democratic (Or Any Other) Party

July 26, 2024 / John Lumea

Throughout and beyond the period, 1853–56, of Joshua Norton’s bruising legal and financial trials prompted by his rice contract dispute with the firm of Ruiz Hermanos — even as a succession of creditors were suing Joshua to recover their debts and the lower courts were resolving these lawsuits by foreclosing on Joshua’s properties — Joshua remained politically engaged.

In May 1855, Joshua ran as a Democratic candidate for San Francisco tax collector.

In August 1858, he presented himself as an independent candidate for U.S. Congress.

New information has surfaced showing that, in between these two moments — in February 1856 — Joshua Norton joined nearly 1,000 other members of San Francisco Democratic Party in signing a public statement protesting corruption in the local party; “refus[ing] further allegiance to the General Committee,” i.e., the local party leadership; and pledging to re-establish the local party according to its original ideals.

Joshua’s action sheds light on his pivot away from party politics towards engaging as a political independent.

It is an important, previously unreported episode in Joshua’s evolution towards becoming the figure who, as Emperor, critiqued public institutions as one who once was inside them but now stood outside.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Proclamations
tags / Joshua Norton, Democratic Party, Democratic General Committee, Democratic Central Committee, protest, reform, statement, signature, Purifiers, Julius K. Rose, Milton Slocum Latham, Sacramento, People's ticket, independent, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, Daily Alta California, 1855, 1856, 1858, 1859

Emperor Norton at Sorbier's

June 16, 2024 / John Lumea

The San Francisco Examiner's 9 January 1880 obituary of Emperor Norton noted that "[h]is living was very inexpensive. He occupied a cheap room and boarded at cheap restaurants."

We recently discovered two sources that point to what appears to be a generations-forgotten association of the Emperor with such a spot: his breakfast patronage of Sorbier's Restaurant, on Commercial Street, less than a block from his own residence on Commercial.

Both sources are written by people who were in San Francisco during Emperor Norton's lifetime: The first is the Japan Weekly Mail's February 1880 obituary of the Emperor — the second, an article of reminiscences published in a San Francisco-based scientific journal in May 1910.

Read on for the full story.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Places
tags / Sorbier's Restaurant, Jules E. Sorbier, Jules Sorbier, International Restaurant, Occidental Restaurant, Commercial Street, Sacramento Street, Washington Street, Merchant Street, breakfast, Louise Bacon Sorbier, menu, photograph, Japan Weekly Mail, Mining and Scientific Press, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, Samuel Williams, 1862, 1863, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1870, 1871, 1872, 1874, 1875, 1877, 1880, 1910

Emperor Norton for Safer Railroads

June 06, 2024 / John Lumea

Two things that have been on The Emperor Norton Trust’s radar for some time…

the Emperor’s contemporaneously reported invention of an automated mechanical railroad switch in September 1872 and
his Proclamation critiquing Andrew Smith Hallidie’s new cable car in September 1873

…don’t make the shortlist of highlights in most tellings of the Norton story.

It turns out that these are part of a larger focus on railroad safety that Emperor Norton had added to his portfolio of concerns by 1869 — the year of a Proclamation we discovered recently that we believe is previously unreported.

We document and provide context for the 1869 Proclamation here.

Also included is documentation of two other of our recent discoveries:

the first news report of Emperor Norton’s railroad switch invention, published in Mining and Scientific Press, a serious and well-respected San Francisco journal of technology-focused industry news, and
the second news report of the invention, which appeared in a Brooklyn, Calif., newspaper the day before the Pacific Appeal — the Emperor’s imperial gazette — published his own Proclamation about it.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / railroad, train, cable car, safety, switch, invention, Clay Street Hill Railroad, Andrew Smith Hallidie, Mining and Scientific Press, 1869, 1872, 1873

Let the Emperor Wear What He Wants

May 26, 2024 / John Lumea

During Emperor Norton’s lifetime, his uniform was regular grist for the fourth estate.

Editorial commentary about the imperial regalia fell mainly into two categories:

Bemused — or outright amused — descriptive lists of the elements that made up the Emperor’s dress: The second-hand military coat with a second-hand blossom in the lapel. The oft-tarnished epaulettes. The feathered beaver hat. The hand-carved walking stick. The sword. The Chinese umbrella. The shoes into which the Emperor had cut holes to relieve his corns.
Laments about the “seedy,” dilapidated state of the uniform.

Rarely seen are opinions as to what might justify such an ensemble in the first place — other than the Emperor’s own notions of regality — or whether, indeed, the ensemble could be justified at all.

Read on for two examples, recently discovered.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / dress, uniform, eccentric, law, society, Eliza Hurd De Wolf, Amasa Lord, W.H.L. Barnes, Daily Dramatic Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, 1866, 1867, 1874, 1875

Emperor Norton's Pipe Dreams

May 12, 2024 / John Lumea

In…

Directory listings showing one of his business interests;
A number of stories about him from his lifetime;
At least one Proclamation by him; and
At least one painting of him done during his life

…there are clues that Emperor Norton had an abiding fondness for cigars and for pipe smoking.

Here, we line up in one place all the evidentiary “dots” we’ve located so far.

Some rare finds here.

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categories / Research, Places, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / tobacco, smoking, cigar, pipe, importing, Sutliff Tobacco Company, Modoc War, art, painting, sculpture, Virgil Williams, Ruth Asawa, Parc 55, 1849, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1863, 1873, 1984

The "Emperor Norton" Trees of Mariposa and Calaveras

April 24, 2024 / John Lumea

Some years ago, I happened upon a lengthy newspaper article — from the 1890s, if memory serves — with a list of honorarily named California redwoods. One of the trees carried the name “Emperor Norton” — so, I made a mental note and resolved to return to this “detective ground” in the future.

Recently, I was delighted to find photographic evidence of an “Emperor Norton” tree: an apparently unpublished stereocard by Eadweard Muybridge, dated 1868, showing a man in a deep bow before a redwood with an "Emperor Norton" sign affixed to it.

The Bancroft Library, which has the card, identifies the site of Muybridge's scene as "Probably in the Mariposa Grove, near Yosemite Valley."

In my effort to confirm this detail, I found multiple references — from the period between 1867 and 1910 — to "Emperor Norton" trees in both of the noted redwood sections of Yosemite: the one in Mariposa County and another in Calaveras County.

The evidence strongly suggests that the tree in Muybridge's stereograph is in Calaveras.

High-resolution image included.

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categories / Research, Places, Tributes, Original sources
tags / tree, redwood, sequoia, name, "Emperor Norton" tree, Calaveras County, Big Trees, Mariposa County, Mariposa Grove, photograph, stereograph, stereocard, Eadweard Muybridge, Yosemite, Edward Jump, 1867, 1868, 1870, 1872

Emperor Norton, A Metaphor in His Own Time

April 18, 2024 / John Lumea

Surely, one sign that a person has achieved the level of “cultural saturation” that we sometimes call “fame” is when when independent sources start using that person’s name as a shorthand to characterize other people.

Here are four stories of people not Emperor Norton who — during Emperor Norton’s lifetime — were labelled in the California press as various kinds of "Emperor Norton":

an “Epistolary Emperor Norton” in 1867;
“the Emperor Norton of the News” in 1869;
"the Emperor Norton of the California press" in 1873; and
the “Healdsburg Emperor Norton” in 1878.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / name, metaphor, D. Weymyss Jobson, Calvin B. McDonald, John McKeag, William Fields, Oakland, Healdsburg Calif., Happy Jack, Dixon Calif., Roseburg Ore., Gardiner Ore., Oakland Daily News, Oakland Daily Transcript, Russian River Flag, Roseburg Review, 1867, 1869, 1877, 1878, 1886

The Emperor Norton Cartoon That Got the Jump on Jump

March 28, 2024 / John Lumea

Ask any careful student of the Emperor Norton story to name the most famous early cartoonist of the Emperor and they are likely to single out Edward Jump (1832–1883). They would be right about that.

They might go on to credit Jump as the first artist to depict Emperor Norton with the dogs Bummer and Lazarus. About this they would be wrong.

It's true that, in the early 1860s, Jump created three cartoons that featured the Emperor and the dogs in the same scene — and that these cartoons have been influential in associating the Emp with Bummer and Lazarus in the popular imagination.

But, Jump was not the first artist to make this connection.

That distinction goes to someone who was not even a cartoonist by profession — but whose lithographed and published cartoon, apparently sold as a standalone sheet, showing Bummer and Lazarus sitting near Emperor Norton predates by as much as a year or more Jump's earliest cartoon showing these characters together.

This is the story of the artist and the cartoon that appear to be Edward Jump's conceptual influencer.

That we are aware, this is the first time the story has been told.

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categories / Research, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Art, artist, comic, cartoon, caricature, R.M. Evans, Edward Jump, Benjamin Franklin Butler, Benjamin F. Butler, B.F. Butler, Tompson in a Quandary, lithograph, lithographer, Bummer & Lazarus, George Washington II, Frederick Coombs, James Tompson, 1861, 1862, 1863

Emperor Norton Status Report, Midwest Edition

March 20, 2024 / John Lumea

In September 1864, a San Francisco correspondent’s letter that included a brief description of Emperor Norton was published in a New York–based Unitarian weekly, then was reprinted 10 newspapers across 9 states.

Eleven years later, in July 1875, another New York publication, Scribner’s Monthly, published a lengthy article by a veteran columnist of the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin. This piece included a snapshot of the Emperor that was excerpted and reprinted in no fewer than 26 papers across 10 states.

We find only one other “write-up” of Emperor Norton published during his lifetime that was reprinted in more than 5 papers.

The description originally appeared in a 2-column-long San Francisco correspondent’s letter published in the Chicago Tribune of 26 February 1877.

An abridged version of the letter that includes the thumbnail sketch of the Emperor was reprinted in 7 newspapers in Kansas, Minnesota, and Missouri.

Appraisals of Emperor Norton penned by short-term correspondents often were less generous than those of San Francisco’s own journalists. Happily, the correspondent of 1877 was more sympathetic than the one of 1864.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / newspapers, media coverage, national, reputation, fame, Oscar Lennox Misch, Chicago Tribune, Midwest, 1870, 1875, 1876, 1877

A Better Date for Two Photographs of Emperor Norton

March 10, 2024 / John Lumea

Even at the most storied research libraries and historical societies, the catalog records for artifacts like early photographs — including basic details like the date and the photographer — can be notoriously unreliable.

Often, these records were created decades, even a century or more, ago — long before the advent of library science as a professional research discipline — and have not been reassessed or updated since then. Digitized, perhaps, but basically fossilized and forgotten. What this means for researchers is that catalog info can be little more than a starting point.

For the last decade, The Emperor Norton Trust has used 1864 as the date for two photographs of the Emperor that appear to have been taken during the same sitting. The date was from the catalog record of a major research institution — and, based on a variety of contextual factors, it was the only credible citation we were able to find.

Recently, we noted that the institution has removed this citation. This, together with our discovery of a new piece of evidence potentially relating to the photographs, prompted us to take a second look at the date question.

As a result of our investigation, we have revised our date for these photos.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / photograph, date, Bradley & Rulofson, Daily Alta California, Albert S. Evans, 1859, 1860, 1863, 1864, 1867, 1869

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