The Emperor Norton Trust

TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Category: Places

Four Previously Unpublished Photographs of the Emperor Norton Reburial Ceremony of 1934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 We believe this is the first time the four unpublished photos of the ceremony — including a lovely capture of Golden Gate Park superintendent John McLaren helping to unveil the Emperor's new headstone — have been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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Comment
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

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

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'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 Does Art Criticism With a Borrowed Jackknife — And the Crowd Loves It

December 28, 2023  /  John Lumea

By 1861 — and for the 18-plus-year remainder of his reign — Emperor Norton was a favorite and enduring subject for San Francisco cartoonists and theater troupes, who found that local audiences enjoyed the good-natured lampooning of their Emperor.

The Emperor himself was less amused — and, there are a couple of oft-cited examples of the Emperor’s expressing his royal displeasure over how he was portrayed in these contexts.

Recently, we uncovered an “episode of displeasure” that is even better documented than the familiar examples.

The occasion was the mounting of an advertisement using Emperor Norton’s image on a construction fence at Montgomery and California Streets. The Emperor borrowed a jackknife; cut out the image of himself; and sliced the image to shreds.

The crowd, as they say, “went wild.”

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Art, cartoon, comic, caricature, photograph, theater, depiction, portrayal, Safe Deposit Building, Montgomery Street, California Street, advertisement, ad, George Frederick Keller, Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Jump, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Reese, 1861, 1863, 1869, 1873, 1874, 1875

Joshua Norton, Eternal Optimist

November 28, 2023  /  John Lumea

Between 1853 and 1859 — a period during which the courts handed him a series of crushing legal defeats that ultimately forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1856 — Joshua Norton engaged in a pattern of making bold public moves that belied — and defied — the harsh facts on the ground.

We recently discovered two early markers in this pattern that appear to have gone undocumented before now:

1) In August 1853 — on the eve of his first major court loss — Joshua offered himself as a Whig candidate for California State Assembly.

2) Under the terms of the Fourth District Court’s ruling of August 1853, the Court ordered the San Francisco sheriff to seize and sell two of Joshua Norton’s properties. In November 1853 — three days before the sale — Joshua took out a newspaper ad seeking a loan for $7,500, possibly part of a gambit to buy back the properties.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Joshua Norton, Joshua Norton & Co., William Sim, Ruiz v. Norton, Fourth District Court, California Supreme Court, candidate, Whig, California State Assembly, property, Sheriff's Sale, William R. Gorham, Pacific Street, Bush Street, Taylor Street, loan, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859

A Tale of Two Storeships

November 21, 2023  /  John Lumea

For some eight decades, maybe more, the story has circulated in Emperor Norton biographies and in Nortonland more broadly that Joshua Norton owned the Genessee — the storeship that “received” the hundred tons of rice that Joshua’s firm bought off a ship in San Francisco Bay in December 1852.

According to this story, the Genessee was a major asset of Joshua Norton & Co., with the firm using the storeship as a warehouse and doing a brisk business in renting out space in the ship to other merchants.

In fact, the only contemporaneous documentation of a connection between Joshua Norton and the Genessee makes it very clear that Joshua was the renter. He did not own the Genessee — he simply rented warehouse space there, as many other traders and merchants did.

However, we recently uncovered a previously undocumented newspaper ad which suggests that — more than two years earlier, in August 1850 — Joshua Norton did lease space in a different storeship, the Orator, with the intention of sub-leasing this space to others.

Read on for documentation of the original arrivals of the Genessee and the Orator in San Francisco — of when these cargo / passenger ships were sold and converted into storeships — of how Joshua Norton’s path intersected with the Genessee and the Orator — and of these ships’ later fates.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / ship, storeship, Genessee, Orator, California Street Wharf, Ruiz v. Norton, California Supreme Court, James McCormic, Ferdinand Vassault, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1856, 1882, 1939, 1986

The Genesis of the Second "Joshua Norton & Co." of San Francisco

November 16, 2023  /  John Lumea

Conventional wisdom holds that, when Joshua Norton arrived in San Francisco, he immediately found a business partner and established Joshua Norton & Co. — and that this firm operated continuously until the legal and financial fallout from Joshua’s prolonged rice contract dispute left him deserted and on his own.

But, a close reading of the newspaper record indicates that, during his first 3½ years in San Francisco, Joshua Norton alternated between periods of working with a partner (“& Co.”) and working as a sole proprietor — and that there were three distinct business partnerships that operated under the name “Joshua Norton & Co.”

The primary 20th-century biographers of Emperor Norton identify Joshua’s first business partner as Peter Robertson. But, our recent discovery of details that apparently were missed by these authors suggests that Joshua and Peter did not meet until nearly a year into Joshua’s San Francisco sojourn — and that they met at a time when the “original” Joshua Norton & Co. already had disappeared from view and Joshua was once again working solo.

The circumstantial evidence points to Peter Robertson as the partner in the second Joshua Norton & Co — not the first.

Read on for the full story.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Joshua Norton, Joshua Norton & Co., Peter Robertson, 242 Montgomery Street, Cross Hobson & Co., Sansome Street, Jackson Street, Pacific Street, William Sim, partner, partnership, newspaper, directory, advertisement, ad, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, 1849, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1939, 1986

Joshua Norton's First Public Moves in San Francisco Appear to Support His Claim of a November 1849 Arrival

October 30, 2023  /  John Lumea

Emperor Norton claimed to have arrived in San Francisco in November 1849, on a ship from Rio de Janeiro.

After the Emperor’s death, Theodor Kirchhoff — a friend of the Emperor’s who was a German poet and essayist — supplied a name for the ship: the Franzeska. (Actually, Kirchhoff said “Franzika” — but, that’s a small point.)

All of the Emperor’s major and minor 20th-century biographers ran with this narrative — even though it never has been independently documented.

Norton's San Francisco arrival narrative remains undocumented — BUT...

Here, we present our discovery of two previously unreported episodes from Joshua Norton’s first several months in San Francisco that appear to support his claim to have arrived in San Francisco in November 1849 — even if they don’t put him on the Franzeska:

  • Norton’s paid notice of a temporary business address in early May 1850, a few weeks before he arrived at what usually is regarded as his first recorded business address, and — even earlier —

  • what may be Norton’s signature on a February 1850 open letter published in the Daily Alta newspaper.

Joshua’s signature on the open letter would make this letter the earliest known newspaper reference to Joshua Norton in San Francisco.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources, Open Questions
tags / Joshua Norton, James Lick, Montgomery Street, Jackson Street, 242 Montgomery Street, 247 Montgomery Street, Payne & Sherwood, open letter, fire, Rio de Janeiro, Valparaiso, Franzeska, Society of California Pioneers, Theodor Kirchhoff, San Francisco Chronicle, Daily Pacific News, Daily Alta California, directory, 1849, 1850, 1856, 1879, 1880, 1886

Joshua Norton at the Merchants' Exchange

September 26, 2023  /  John Lumea

The period between October 1854 and June 1855 has been an underexplored moment in the Joshua Norton story. But, it's a moment that found Joshua at his steeliest.  

He had no choice, really. In October 1854, the California Supreme Court ruled against Joshua in his rice appeal. Foreclosures on his real estate interests were immediate. But, he knew that it was only a matter of time before the Court lowered the heaviest boom — which the Court did when, in May 1855, it ordered Joshua to pay the plaintiffs $20,000.

And yet, during this most precarious of 8 months: Joshua Norton attached himself to the most prestigious new business address in the city. And, he found friends to help him stay afloat and, in one case, to take a crack at launching a major civic infrastructure project — not a bridge, but at the time even more necessary — that the state legislature would not catch up to authorizing for another 5 years.

This is not a man who was going down without a fight.

Read on for a deep-dive into a previously unreported key episode that foreshadowed the Survivor-Emperor to come.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Merchants' Exchange, Battery, Washington Street, Jackson Street, George Sweeny, Theodore Baugh, Sweeny and Baugh, Joshua Norton, California Supreme Court, North Beach, bulkhead, breakwater, seawall, survey, Charles Ordeman, wool, Grisar Byrne & Co., Emile Grisar, Thomas Byrne, E.A. Suwerkrop, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1854, 1855, 1857

Joshua Norton, Pioneer

August 08, 2023  /  John Lumea

In Colville’s San Francisco directory of 1856, Joshua Norton listed his “office” address as Pioneer Hall — the Society of California Pioneers’ headquarters and clubhouse on Portsmouth Square, San Francisco.

Joshua declared bankruptcy in 1856, so his living arrangements might have been unstable. But, he was affiliated with a Masonic lodge during this period — while he was not a member of the Pioneers.

So why did he list himself at Pioneer Hall rather than Masonic Hall (on Montgomery Street)?

Here’s a closer look at this episode, in which — apparently — Joshua Norton and the Pioneers were drawn into one anothers’ orbits and revealed things about one another in the process.

Includes a rarely seen 1861 photograph of Pioneer Hall after the Society had added “Pioneers” signage to the top of the building.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Society of California Pioneers, Pioneer Hall, Portsmouth Square, James Lick, Samuel Colville, address, directory, photograph, Overland Monthly, George R. Fardon, 1850, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1862, 1863

The Ferry Building Clock Tower from Emperor Norton's Street

July 20, 2023  /  John Lumea

The best-known vista of the 245-foot-tall clock tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building is from along Market Street, looking northeast.

The best-known street vista — but not the only one.

The clock tower also rises as the eastern visual terminus of Commercial Street.

On today’s Commercial Street, the tower is most readily seen from the 2-block stretch between Montgomery Street to the east and Grant Avenue to the west. This is the stretch adjacent to, and near, the former site of 624 Commercial between Montgomery and Kearny Streets — where Emperor Norton lived from 1864/65 until his death in 1880.

The view of the Ferry Building clock tower from here is one reason why The Emperor Norton Trust has proposal that the tower be named Emperor Norton Tower. You can read our proposal and commentaries by clicking the Learn More button at EmperorNortonTower.org.

Click through for a series of seven views of the clock tower photographed from the 7-block stretch of Commercial Street between Drumm Street and Grant Avenue during the first half of the tower’s 125-year life-so-far — the period between c.1900 and 1960.

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categories / Research, Places, Projects, Tributes
tags / San Francisco Ferry Building, Ferry Building, clock tower, Commercial Street, photograph, photo, 1898, 1900, 1935, 1959, 1960, Emperor Norton Tower

The Time Emperor Norton Was a "Pepper" Too

April 18, 2023  /  John Lumea

On Christmas Eve 1862, at the Royal Polytechnic Institute, in London, the Institute’s director, John Henry Pepper, debuted his theatrical refinement of a reflection illusion that came to be known as “Pepper’s ghost.”

The sensation had made it to the United States by the early 1870s — probably initially being performed as a sideshow attraction.

But, on the evening of 26 December 1879, the resident company of the Metropolitan Theater in Sacramento, Calif., used what they called “the Pepper Mystery” to dramatize the Emperor Norton.

It was a commonplace in the 1860s and ‘70s for theater troupes in San Francisco and elsewhere in California to burlesque the Emperor for laughs. But, it seems as though this performance might have been a little different.

Did members of the audience at the Metropolitan all slap their knees at the sight of an ethereal Emperor Norton on the stage? Or did some shed a quiet tear for the passing of an era that too quickly was slipping through their fingers?

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categories / Research, Original sources, Places, Tributes
tags / Pepper's ghost, Pepper's Mystery, Pepper Mystery, illusion, reflection, effect, John Henry Pepper, London, Theater, theatrical, Metropolitan Theater (Sacramento), Sacramento, George Stevens, Eureka, Josh Ellingson, experiment, 1862, 1870s, 1877, 1879

How to Make the "Emperor Norton Place" Street-Naming Proposal Better

April 07, 2023  /  John Lumea

If one wished to honor Emperor Norton with a street name in San Francisco, the 600 block of Commercial Street would not necessarily be the most fruitful option — notwithstanding the fact that the 600 block of Commercial is where the Emperor laid his head for the last 14 or 15 years of his life.

But, the 600 block of Commercial is what the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has put on the table. Indeed, on Tuesday 11 April, the Supes are set to vote on a resolution to add “Emperor Norton Place” as a commemorative name for this block.

Comes a couple of questions:

  • At the level of both poetry and design, is “Emperor Norton Place” really the best name? What about “Emperor Norton Way”?

  • How about adding to the Commercial Street resolution a clause (not currently included) that explicitly requests signage — as the Supervisors’ resolution for “Tony Bennett Way” did in 2017?

Here are some suggestions for how to make a good proposal much better.

Details for submitting public comment in advance of the April 11th meeting are at the bottom of this commentary.

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categories / Commentary, Tributes, Places
tags / name, naming, civic, commemorative, street, Commercial Street, Montgomery Street, Kearny Street, Eureka Lodgings, 624 Commercial, 650 Commercial, 652 Commercial, San Francisco Board of Supervisors, resolution, Aaron Peskin, 2023

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