The Emperor Norton Trust

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

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Tag: 1869

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emperor Norton Abolished the Democratic and Republican Parties — Twice

April 28, 2023  /  John Lumea

Students of Emperor Norton are familiar with his August 1869 Proclamation to “abolish and dissolve the Democratic and Republican parties.”

The Emperor Norton Trust has uncovered a previously unreported second Proclamation, from September 1876, in which the Emperor commands “the dissolution of the Republican and Democratic parties” — although for different reasons than he gave in 1869.

This second Proclamation further reinforces Emperor Norton’s longstanding antipathy to the major parties and to the U.S. party system — a posture which led Joshua Norton to declare himself an “independent candidate” for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1858 and to deliver a brief speech at a public “No Party” forum in 1875.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / independent politics, independent candidate, No Party movement, political parties, Democratic Party, Republican Party, San Francisco Herald, Oakland Daily News, 1858, 1869, 1875, 1876

Beinecke Library and The Emperor Norton Trust Partner to Correct Description of Carte de Visite

April 14, 2023  /  John Lumea

At the suggestion and request of The Emperor Norton Trust, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University has corrected its description of a carte de visite photograph by Jacob Shew that was misidentified as being possibly of Emperor Norton.

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categories / Research, News
tags / carte de visite, photograph, Jacob Shew, Beinecke Library, Yale University, Carl Mautz, catalog, record, correction, update, 1860, 1867, 1868, 1869, 1870, 1871

The Sporting Emperor Norton

March 28, 2023  /  John Lumea

Emperor Norton tried his hand at riding a bike — roller skating — even jumping rope.

Later, the Emperor was a regular attendee at everything from horse races to endurance walking marathons to wrestling tournaments.

Here’s a first effort at documenting an underappreciated “sporting” thread in the Emperor’s story.

This includes:

  • many new details about known episodes (velocipede; skating), 1869–72

  • several new episodes, 1873–79

Also includes documentation of what may be the last reported sighting of Emperor Norton.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / sport, tournament, race, competition, feat, amusement, Mechanics' Pavilion, Union Hall, Woodward's Gardens, Badger's Grand Central Park, Bay District Fair Ground, Platt's Music Hall, Platt's Hall, velocipede, boneshaker, roller skating, skates, jump rope, horse race, walking, wrestling, rink, pavilion, Eadweard Muybridge, Carleton Watkins, John Armstrong, 1869, 1870, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1879

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

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

Emperor Norton's Sister, Aficionado of Anemones

August 26, 2021  /  John Lumea

Pull up a chair for the fascinating and enigmatic story of Emperor Norton’s younger sister, Selina Jane.

Born on the Cape of Good Hope in 1824, when Joshua, the future Emperor, was 6 years old, Selina “married Scottish” and married well — twice.

Selina had moved to England by age 20. She had four daughters with her first husband, a MacLeod, living first in Kent, then near Glasgow, then back down in Devon.

Shortly after her first husband died, Selina married a Mackenzie, whose prominence as a Scottish lawyer brought her to Edinburgh.

Two years later, this second husband died. A few years after that, Selina moved from Edinburgh to the North Sea cloister of St. Andrews and was gone herself within a year or so — at 45. But, her three surviving daughters continued to live in, and next door to, the St. Andrews house for another 20 years.

Along the way, Selina in 1861 wrote and published a lovely, finely observed article about her sea anemones — whom she called her “drawing-room pets.”

The article — and many, many other details — are documented here thoroughly, if not very deeply.

It’s tantalizing evidence that makes me want to learn more of the Emperor’s little sister.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / Selina Jane Norton, Selina Jane MacLeod, Selina Jane Mackenzie, Donald Hume MacLeod, Emmeline MacLeod, Louisa MacLeod, Lavinia MacLeod, Frances MacLeod, James Hay Mackenzie, Kent, Devon, Dawlish, Glasgow, Edinburgh, St. Andrews, St. John's Episcopal Church, anemones, Once A Week, writing, writer, 1824, 1843, 1861, 1863, 1869

Emperor Norton's Tour of 1864

April 15, 2019  /  John Lumea

By the time the calendar opened on 1864, Emperor Norton was a well-known presence in San Francisco, as well in Oakland and Berkeley. And, he had begun making excursions to Sacramento.

But, it appears that the Emperor had yet to set foot in outposts of his Empire further afield.

Between mid February and mid March 1864, he remedied this with two royal junkets in quick succession — the first, to Marysville and Oroville; the second, to Petaluma.

Of course, the newspapers both at home and “abroad” were only too happy to cover these visits.

Read on for the whole story — and for rarely seen photographs of a couple of the hotels where Emperor Norton stayed when he visited these places.

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categories / Original sources, Research
tags / Marysville, Western House, Western Hotel, Marysville Daily Appeal, Marysville Californian Express, Oroville, Northern California Railroad, California Northern Railroad, Petaluma, American Hotel, Petaluma Journal, Daily Alta California, Petaluma Journal & Argus, 1864, 1869

Emperor Norton at a Pro-Civil Rights Lecture, March 1868

February 24, 2019  /  John Lumea

Emperor Norton’s on-point attendance at an early event of the Order of Freedom’s Defenders — a Unionist-Republican political club dedicated to preserving Lincoln's legacy; advancing Reconstruction; electing Grant as President; and securing the Constitutional protections necessary to guarantee the civil rights of African-Americans — can be seen as “of a piece” with the Emperor’s broader commitment to African-American equality.

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categories / Original sources, Places, Research
tags / Order of Freedom's Defenders, General Oscar Hugh La Grange, Platt's Music Hall, Union, Republican, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Reconstruction, civil rights, San Francisco Examiner, Peter Anderson, Fifteenth Amendment, Pacific Appeal, Proclamations, 1868, 1869, 1871, 1874

Emperor Norton on the Front Row of the Fight for Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment Removing Race as a Barrier to Voting

February 08, 2019  /  John Lumea

In February 1869, the U.S. Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which would have the effect of extending the right to vote in the United States to all men of color.

Ten months later — as ratification was making its way through the states, and with California still in the balance — a respected African-American editor and activist named Peter Anderson gave a lecture in favor of the Amendment at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church, on Stockton Street in San Francisco.

Emperor Norton showed up, took a seat down front and was “an attentive listener,” according to the San Francisco Examiner.

The Amendment was ratified in February 1870 — no thanks to California, where the legislature rejected the Amendment against a backdrop of anti-Chinese racism in the state. But, Anderson — the editor of the African-American-owned and -operated Pacific Appeal newspaper — may have remembered Emperor Norton’s solidarity when, late that year, he took on the Emperor as a regular contributor to his pages.

Over the next four-and-a-half years, Anderson would publish — almost always on the front page — some 250 of Emperor Norton’s proclamations, including those insisting on the rights of African-Americans to attend public schools and ride public streetcars.

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categories / Original sources, Research
tags / Fifteenth Amendment, 15th Amendment, Peter Anderson, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, A.M.E. Zion, San Francisco Examiner, Pacific Appeal, Mirror of the Times, Philip Alexander Bell, Harper's Weekly, Burlingame Treaty, Chinese, abolitionist, vote, suffrage, 1869, 1870

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