The Emperor Norton Trust

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

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Tag: 1865

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

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

From 60 Miles to the East, A Newspaper Foreshadows Emperor Norton's Role as Defender of the Chinese

February 14, 2024  /  John Lumea

In February 1868, Emperor Norton issued his first extant Proclamation in defense of the Chinese.

A year before that, in February 1867, an anti-Chinese riot in San Francisco prompted a San Francisco correspondent to a paper in Stockton — 60 miles to the east of San Francisco — to suggest that Emperor Norton was better-positioned than the San Francisco Mayor to lead on the Chinese question.

Did the Emperor and the correspondent know one another from before?

Had they traded their views on the Chinese question?

Did they influence one another on this issue?

Very likely, both men were regular visitors to the same building on Post Street between 1862 and 1867. This would have created the opportunity for them to meet and befriend one another.

If so, the operative question is: What did they talk about?

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categories / Research, Original sources, Proclamations
tags / race, racism, Chinese, riot, San Francisco, correspondent, newspaper, Stockton Daily Evening Herald, Linn C. Doyle, C.E.B. Howe, Charles Edward Bishop Howe, Dashaway Association, Dashaway Hall, Lyceum for Self-Culture, 1859, 1862, 1865, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1874

The Pantheonic Statuette of Norton I

May 30, 2023  /  John Lumea

It’s well known that souvenir photographs and lithographs of Emperor Norton were sold in San Francisco shops during the Emperor’s lifetime.

Norton biographer William Drury takes it considerably further to claim that, by the early 1870s, there was a whole cottage industry of “Emperor Norton statuettes, Emperor Norton dolls, Emperor Norton mugs and jugs, Emperor Norton Imperial Cigars” — and even that there were peddlers hawking Emperor Norton merch at his funeral.

I find no evidence to support much of what Drury asserts — but…

In 1877 — a couple of years before Emperor Norton died in 1880 — a German immigrant jeweler and sculptor in San Francisco created a highly accomplished statuette of the Emperor that deserves a much closer look than it has received.

Although there is no ready evidence that this nearly-two-foot-tall statuette was sold in shops, there is evidence to suggest that it was a fixture in San Francisco saloons — and even that the Emperor himself had a copy in his apartment.

Among other things, I document here the three known copies of the statuette and offer a glimpse into the life and work of the sculptor.

There even are cameo appearances from historians of Ancient Rome and the Oxford English Dictionary.

It’s a fascinating story, previously untold.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Tributes, ARENA
tags / Art, sculpture, statue, statuette, figurine, Herman J. Brand, Jonas Brand, jeweler, sculptor, plaster, medallion, token, charm, gold, saloon, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Society of California Pioneers, Wells Fargo History Museum, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, photograph, cabinet card, painting, lithograph, terra cotta, Pantheon, pantheonic, Rome, Oxford English Dictionary, 1862, 1865, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1872, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1883, 1906, 1921, 1930, 1935, 1939, 1986, 2021

The "Eyes of the Emperor" in 1879

March 20, 2023  /  John Lumea

The Emperor Norton Trust previously has documented 16 Proclamations of Emperor Norton on various aspects of “the Chinese question” — the latest being published in April 1878, just 2½ weeks before the Emperor’s highly publicized sand-lot encounter that month with the anti-Chinese demagogue Denis Kearney.

But, we’ve discovered three new pieces of evidence, from 1879, indicating that — for nearly 2 years after his encounter with Kearny, and right up until his death in 1880 — the Emperor continued to make good on his 1873 pledge and warning that “the eyes of the Emperor will be upon anyone who shall council [sic] any outrage or wrong on the Chinese” [emphasis in the original].

This evidence includes:

  • a second encounter between Emperor Norton and Denis Kearny, in January 1879, in which Kearney snarkily addressed the Emperor from his sand-lot platform;

  • an anti-Kearney public comment by the Emperor on the same day, at one of the freethinking, reform-minded discussion forums he regularly attended — a discovery that provides an opportunity to add a pin to the Trust’s interactive Emperor Norton Map of the World; and

  • a September 1879 editorial comment in the Sacramento Daily Bee, bearing witness to the Emperor’s ongoing reputation as what the Bee disparagingly called “Protector of China”

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categories / Research, Places, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / Chinese, China, Denis Kearney, Workingmen's Party of California, sandlot, sand lot, Theanthropic Society, David Hewes Building, Grand Central Hall, Sixth Street, Market Street, James C. McCue, Oakland Daily Radiator, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Daily Bee, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, Daily Alta California, New York Christian Inquirer, Oroville Daily Mercury, 1867, 1868, 1865, 1870, 1873, 1878, 1879, 1880

Emperor Norton at Swimley's

February 24, 2023  /  John Lumea

Joshua Norton made many visits to Sacramento in the early 1850s.

But, after declaring himself Emperor in 1859, his first imperial visit to California’s capital was in December 1863.

By 1863, Emperor Norton already was becoming a legend.

And, on this 1863 visit, he is reported to have dined at a restaurant run by someone who was becoming a legend of his own.

The restaurant was the Cincinnati. The proprietor was William Swimley. And the eatery — known locally as “Swimley’s” — was half-way through a 20-year run as “oldest, neatest, best and cheapest” food spot in Sacramento.

The building where Swimley’s was located from c.1861 until its closing in 1871 occupies a fascinating place in the history of early Sacramento.

In the course of researching this wonderful story, we’ve found evidence that the building is older than has been believed.

Deep documentation and rare photographs included.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Places
tags / Sacramento, Cincinnati Restaurant, Charles Franklin Swimley, Charles F. Swimley, Swimley's, Swimley's Boarders, 21 K Street, 25 K Street, Second Street, Verandah Hotel, Union Hotel, James Lansing, Union Hotel annex, restaurant, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, 1850, 1852, 1853, 1855, 1856, 1858, 1859, 1861, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866, 1867, 1871, 1873, 1879, 1940, 1960, 1980s

The Pro-Vaccination Emperor of 1869

January 04, 2023  /  John Lumea

Documentation is elusive for those Proclamations of Emperor Norton that were published in the mid to late 1860s — the period in between (a) the few years after Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor in 1859 and (b) Emperor Norton’s adoption of the Pacific Appeal newspaper as his “imperial gazette” in late December 1870.

So, it’s gratifying to have discovered a “new” Proclamation from this period — especially one that

  • has resonance for our current public health crisis brought on by COVID–19; and that

  • adds to the body of evidence strongly suggesting that Joshua Norton thought of himself as being Emperor long before he declared it publicly in 1859.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Proclamations
tags / smallpox, pandemic, epidemic, Board of Supervisors, vaccine, COVID, reign, Empire, rice, lawsuit, California Supreme Court, Daily Alta California, Oakland Daily Transcript, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1859, 1865, 1868, 1869

The Mixed Economy of the Eureka Lodgings Building of Commercial Street

October 28, 2022  /  John Lumea

When one reads that Emperor Norton lived in "the Eureka Lodgings" at "624 Commercial Street," it's tempting to imagine that the Eureka was in a building with one address and one use — and that the Eureka was it.

In fact: There were two buildings on the Eureka site between c.1850 and Emperor Norton's death in 1880, with the Eureka building arriving in 1857. Both buildings had three addresses and a variety of business tenants — with the second of the two buildings hosting the Eureka and two previous hotel/lodging establishments that each occupied only a portion of the top two floors.

At various times during the 1860s ― including while the Emperor was living here between 1864/65 and 1880 — the second building was home to some of the best-known and -respected businesses in early San Francisco history.

Both of the buildings on the Eureka site were located between Montgomery and Kearny Streets, with frontages on both Commercial and Clay Streets.

What follows is, we believe, the first published attempt to establish a "tenant timeline" of the Commercial Street frontages of these buildings between c.1850 and 1880.

Read on for some fascinating history — and some terrific advertisements!

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Commercial Street, Montgomery Street, Kearny Street, Eureka Lodgings, Arcade, Arcade Saloon, Hotel Richelieu, Benton House, Aaron Babcock, David Hutchinson, John Cabaniss, A.C. Gamble, Pierre Trapet, Felix Hanlon, Meussdorffer, hatter, Lawrence & Houseworth, John W. Cherry, Contra Costa Laundry, Kohler Chase & Co., directories, advertising, advertisement, Daily Alta California, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco Daily Herald, 154 Commercial, 156 Commercial, 158 Commercial, 624 Commercial, 626 Commercial, 628 Commercial, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861, 1864, 1865, 635 Commercial, 637 Commercial, 175 Clay, 177 Clay, 637 Clay

Emperor Norton’s Residence, the Eureka Lodgings, Was Not Located (Exactly) Where You Think It Was

September 26, 2022  /  John Lumea

Over the last 25 years or so, a consensus has emerged among those attuned to San Francisco history — and particularly among Nortonophiles — that the former site of the Eureka Lodgings — where Emperor Norton is documented to have lived between 1864/1865 and his death in 1880 — is the privately owned public open space (POPOS) known as Empire Park, located at 642 Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny Streets.

That's been the consensus.

But, a careful analysis of two key bodies of evidence — (1) photographs of this stretch of Commercial Street taken between 1877 and 1906, and (2) Sanborn fire insurance and official San Francisco block (property) maps from the generation or two before and after the earthquake and fires of 1906 — reveal the Empire Park designation to be mistaken.

The Eureka Lodgings was located on Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny — just not on that site.

In the attached deeply researched and documented — and extensively illustrated — article, I provide:

1) Confirmation — for the first time, I believe — of the visual ID of the Eureka Lodgings building, using photographs from during and after Emperor Norton's lifetime. (Don’t miss the fabulous detail in these new hi-res scans from 1878, c.1892–94 and 1906 — worth the price of admission!)

2) A new location for the former site of the Eureka that better accords with the historical record.

It's a deep dive — so, pull up a chair!

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categories / Research, Original sources, Places
tags / Eureka Lodgings, 624 Commercial, A. Lietz Company, William Meakin, machine shop, Grabhorn Press, Empire Day, United States Sub-Treasury, 612 Commercial, San Francisco Morning Call, Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, The Hebrew, Philo Jacoby, Ernest Jacoby, Bret Harte, Eadweard Muybridge, panorama, Allen Hancock Knight, Treu Ergeben Hecht, T.E. Hecht, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Sanborn map, block map, 1853, 1864, 1865, 1871, 1872, 1877, 1878, 1880, 1887, 1892, 1894, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1918, 1990, 2000, Empire House

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

Did San Francisco City Government Really Buy Emperor Norton a New Suit?

May 18, 2022  /  John Lumea

For nearly a century, one of the favored “chestnuts” served up in biographical accounts of Emperor Norton has been the claim that, when the Emperor’s uniform became tattered, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors — the City’s elected government — bought him a new one.

It now appears that this undocumented story may have gotten its start in a little book about the Emperor that was published in the late 1920s — nearly 50 years after his death.

But, during the period of Emperor Norton’s reign, 1859–1880, neither San Francisco’s newspapers nor the City’s own Municipal Reports have any record of such official government largesse.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / uniform, regalia, regimentals, suit, coat, clothes, clothing, wardrobe, Board of Supervisors, Albert Dressler, Herbert Asbury, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, 1863, 1865, 1868, 1869, 1872, 1927, 1933, 1986

The Secret History of One of Emperor Norton's Favorite Free-Lunch Haunts

March 04, 2022  /  John Lumea

In his 1986 biography of Emperor Norton, William Drury leaned heavily into anecdotal stories forging an association between the Emperor and Martin & Horton’s, a saloon at the southeast corner of Montgomery and Clay Streets, San Francisco, that was known as a hub for editors and reporters — and also for having one of the better free-lunch counters.

But, it turns out that, in addition to Martin & Horton’s, the building on this corner — which was directly across Clay Street from where the Transamerica pyramid now stands — housed a second saloon — a spot that also was known for its good food and drink, and for catering to the journalists and writers who covered the Emperor in their papers.

Which begs the question: Was Emperor Norton a regular at one saloon? — the other? — or both?

Jumping off from a well-known photograph of the Montgomery and Clay building after it suffered a fire in November 1862, the following research documents in some detail the overlapping histories of these two saloons and their proprietors — whose businesses had space in two different buildings on this corner between 1854 and 1887.

It’s a fascinating story.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Martin & Horton's, Clark Martin, Tom Horton, Faust Cellar, Louis Thiele, George Thiele, Joseph Hug, Montgomery Street, Clay Street, free lunch, 1854, 1857, 1862, 1865, 1870, 1873, 1887

Did Emperor Norton Really Live at the Eureka Lodgings on Commercial Street for 17 Years?

January 14, 2022  /  John Lumea

The received wisdom, since the time of Emperor Norton’s death in January 1880, has been that the Emperor lived at his final and most famous San Francisco residence — the Eureka Lodgings, at 624 Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny — “for seventeen years.”

That was the phrase that a number of San Francisco papers used in their obituaries and funeral notices. The most influential Norton biographers of the twentieth century extrapolated from this that the Emperor lived at the Eureka from 1863 to 1880. And, now, this claim is firmly ensconced as one of the most oft-invoked tenets of the biographical catechism of Norton I.

But, the directories of the period don’t support an 1863 arrival date.

Rather, they suggest that the Emperor might have taken up his room at the Eureka Lodgings as late as summer 1865.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Places
tags / San Francisco directories, Metropolitan Hotel, Benton House, Eureka Lodgings, 624 Commercial, Felix Hanlon, Aaron Babcock, David Hutchinson, obituaries, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Morning Call, Daily Alta California, Robert Ernest Cowan, Allen Stanley Lane, David Warren Ryder, William Drury, E Clampus Vitus, 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1867, 1868

The Emperor Was Not Amused

December 21, 2021  /  John Lumea

Ostensibly, this is a piece about our recent discovery of a Proclamation in which Emperor Norton, in 1867, prohibited unauthorized stage depictions of himself.

But, a theater’s offending play and the Emperor’s response are the bread of the sandwich on offer here. The real meat is a brief history of the varied theatrical/“amusement” enterprises and their producers/impresarios that, over the course of a decade or so in the 1850s and ‘60s, occupied the second floor of the building where the play was staged — a building just around the corner from the Emperor’s imperial digs on Commercial Street in San Francisco.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Places, Original sources
tags / California Exchange, Kearny Street, Clay Street, Second Committee of Vigilance, John "Grizzly" Adams, Pacific Museum, Ferdinand Gilbert, Gilbert's Melodeon, Lotta Crabtree, William Worrell, Worrell's Olympic, Olympic Theater, The Naked Truth, Frank Prescott, Theater, burlesque, 1850, 1855, 1856, 1859, 1862, 1865, 1867

"To Dream of the Emperor Norton"

March 11, 2019  /  John Lumea

In January 1865 — back in his native New York for a year, after spending the previous five years in San Francisco — David Montross Gazlay debuted a new magazine that he called Gazlay’s Pacific Monthly. The purpose of the magazine was to evangelize an East Coast readership as to the virtues — and the opportunities — of the Pacific states and territories.

The inaugural issue of the Pacific Monthly featured a reprint of a charming item of literary humor originally published elsewhere — apparently in the early 1860s — and which includes a poignant reference to Emperor Norton.

As it happens, Gazlay and the Emperor had occasion to meet in February 1861, when both men attended a citizens’ meeting — called by San Francisco Mayor Henry Teschemacher — to plan a major pro-Union rally.

Click below for the whole story.

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categories / Original sources, Research
tags / David Montross Gazlay, David M. Gazlay, David Gazlay, Gazlay's Pacific Monthly, Union, Daily Alta California, Sacramento Daily Union, magazines, periodicals, 1865, 1861

The Eastern Approach to the Imperial Palace

April 30, 2017  /  John Lumea

Two newly discovered photographs show new glimpses of the eastern end of the block of Commercial Street where Emperor Norton lived — as it was just after he moved there. The photos are from 1865 and 1866. The Emperor had moved to the block in late 1862 or early 1863. Samuel Clemens a.k.a. Mark Twain worked on this block — next door to the palace, in fact — in the summer of 1864.

These views would have been very familiar to both gentlemen.

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categories / Original sources, Places, Research
tags / photographs, 1865, 1866, Commercial Street, Montgomery Street, Kearny Street, Eureka Lodgings, Empire Park, Mark Twain

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