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

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

Celebrated Humorist in 1871: Emperor Norton Is Among “The Geniuses That Frisco Has Sent Broadcast to the World"

January 22, 2024 / John Lumea

In June 1849, English-born composer, singer, dramatic recitalist, impressionist, travel writer, and humorist Stephen Charnock Massett (1819–1898) gave a performance at a schoolhouse on Portsmouth Plaza, San Francisco, that is credited as the first professional show in the city.

Twenty-two years later, Massett was a bonafide national, international — and San Francisco-identified — celebrity who went by his pen and stage name “Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville.”

In April 1871, while Massett was living in San Francisco, the city’s Daily Alta newspaper published a column of his, in which he characterized the Emperor Norton as one of “the geniuses that Frisco has sent broadcast to the world.”

The other cultural exports on Massett’s list include Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and Charles Warren Stoddard.

Read on to learn more about the fascinating Stephen Massett and his 1871 column giving props to the Emperor.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Stephen Charnock Massett, Stephen C. Massett, Stephen Massett, Jeems Pipes of Pipesville, Jeems Pipes, Pipesville, Daily Alta California, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Frisco, Portsmouth Square, 1849, 1854, 1868, 1871

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 and the McAllister Brothers

July 15, 2022 / John Lumea

The new HBO series The Gilded Age, from Downton Abbey creator and writer Julian Fellowes, is introducing a new generation to the historical figure of Ward McAllister. Famous for being an arbiter of New York’s “high society” of the 1860s–90s, McAllister used his list of “the 400” to advise Caroline Schermerhorn Astor a.k.a. “Mrs. Astor” on whom should be “in” and whom should be “out.”

But, before arriving in New York in 1858, Ward had spent the dawning years of the 1850s in San Francisco, where he lived in the same house with his older brother Hall McAllister, who arrived in the city in 1849 and remained until his death in 1888 — a period during he which he became of the most eminent and respected attorneys of his generation.

It’s very likely that, in the early 1850s, Joshua Norton — then at the height of his prosperity and influence — socialized with the brothers McAllister in their home, together with his friend Joseph Eastland, a founding partner of the company that went on to become PG&E.

In fact: It was Hall McAllister who — in 1853–54 — represented Joshua’s opponents in the rice affair.

It’s a fascinating set of connections that (a) reveals Joshua Norton to have been a guest — but never really a member — of a world of privilege and power that would become closed to him once his life took a different turn, even as it (b) shines new light on one member of that world who never forgot him.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Hall McAllister, Ward McAllister, Matthew Hall McAllister, Pike Street, attorney, lawyer, judge, The 400, Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, Mrs. Astor, Joseph G. Eastland, Joseph Eastland, Ruiz v. Norton, 1849, 1850, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1863, 1865, 1879, 1888, 1895, 1904

Joshua Norton First Set Foot in the United States in 1846 — in Boston

May 25, 2021 / John Lumea

In the United States, the prevailing narrative about Joshua Norton, for 80 years and more, has been that

Joshua did not leave Cape Town until late 1848 or early 1849 — prompted by the deaths of both parents and his two nearest siblings between May 1846 and August 1848, and possibly also by news of the California Gold Rush.

He sailed directly from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro, arriving in Rio early to mid 1849, and from Rio to San Francisco.
He may have spent a few months in South America between his arrivals in Rio and San Francisco.
His introduction to the United States was his arrival in San Francisco in late 1849.

But a persuasive body of evidence — including a passenger list, a disembarkation ticket and two newspaper arrivals notices — points to a different reality: Joshua Norton initially sailed from Liverpool to Boston, arriving in Boston in March 1846.

This means that Joshua probably left Cape Town no later than November 1845 — and that the reasons for his departure had nothing to do with family deaths or the Gold Rush.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Joshua Norton, Cape Town, Liverpool, Boston, passenger list, disembarkation ticket, Sunbeam, Louis Norton, Sarah Norden, Philip Norton, John Norton, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, 1849

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