In fall 1932 — in connection with San Francisco's mandated "eviction" of cemeteries within the city limits — the remains of Emperor Norton were exhumed from their original resting place in the city’s Masonic Cemetery.
In 1934, the Emperor was reburied, with a new headstone, at his current resting place: Woodlawn Memorial Park, in Colma, Calif.
A public ceremony dedicating the new gravesite was held at Woodlawn on 30 June 1934. This is the date that received headlines around the country — and it is the date that those who follow the Emperor's story associate with his reburial.
But the reburial itself took place nearly 3 months earlier, on 2 April 1934 — 91 years ago today.
Click below to learn more — and for our suggestion about how to provide for more thoughtful and intentional preservation and care of Emperor Norton's headstone and gravesite.
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In his 1986 book Norton I: Emperor of the United States (Dodd, Mead) — long regarded as the “standard biography” of Emperor Norton — William Drury indulges in some evidentiary sleight-of-hand to create the false impression that the cortege that followed the Emperor from his funeral site to his grave site was “two miles long.”
In the decades since the publication of Drury’s book, this “cortege claim” has become one of the most commonly deployed flourishes in the popular telling of the Emperor Norton story.
In fact, the most reliable and detailed eyewitness report published the day after the Emperor’s funeral indicates that, while the cortege route was about two miles long, the length of the cortege itself was maybe a half-block.
Also included here: The origins of the claim that “30,000” people viewed the Emperor lying in state — or even constituted the cortege — rather than the already-exceptional “10,000” reported the next day.
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If you know the Emperor Norton story well enough to know that…
When the Emperor died in January 1880, he was buried in the Masonic Cemetery, in San Francisco.
As part of the Great San Francisco Cemetery Eviction of the early twentieth century, the Emperor’s remains were moved to new grave, at Woodlawn cemetery, in Colma, Calif.
The Emperor’s reburial ceremony took place at Woodlawn on 30 June 1934.
…you may have assumed that the Emperor “remained” at the Masonic Cemetery more or less until the time of the reburial ceremony.
In fact, Emperor Norton was disinterred 20 months earlier.
So, where were Emperor Norton's remains located from the time they were disinterred in San Francisco in October 1932 until the time they were reburied in Colma in June 1934?
Here are a few clues.
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In 1918, author and literary anthologist Ella Sterling Cummins Mighels (1853-1934) recalled her childhood memory of Emperor Norton and recounted the special Decoration Day tribute that was repaid him five years earlier.
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