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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Many crunchy-snack lovers who bought and enjoyed the Emperor Norton Original San Francisco Sourdough Snacks between 1982 and 2012 will have known little of the Emperor Norton story.
But, Norton initiates and non-initiates alike will know even less about who really made the Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks possible — specifically: Who was the lead venture-capital investor in the product?
As it happens, the partners in the VC firm that led on the Emperor Norton snacks were fresh from having created and developed one of the best–known consumer products and brands in the United States.
Read on for a glimpse into the origin story of the Emperor Norton Sourdough Snacks.
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In 2015, we published a piece, “The Emperor of Brooklyn,” about Emperor Norton’s connection to Brooklyn, Calif., an area southeast of Lake Merritt, in Oakland, that was an independent township from 1856 until it was annexed to Oakland in late 1872.
The main documentary evidence for this connection was a couple of Proclamations that were published in the San Francisco-based Pacific Appeal. The Emperor had designated the Appeal his as his “imperial gazette” in December 1870 — and, ultimately, the paper published some 250 of his Proclamations. But, these particular Proclamations were datelined “Brooklyn.”
It turns out that these and other Proclamations were published simultaneously — sometimes originally — in a short-lived Brooklyn weekly called the Brooklyn Home Journal and Alameda County Advertiser.
Read on to learn about this newspaper; exactly where it was located; Emperor Norton’s visits to the paper’s offices; and the respect the paper paid to the Emperor in 1872.
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In 2015, The Emperor's Bridge Campaign launched a new holiday to commemorate the date — 17 September 1859 — when Joshua Norton declared himself and his Empire. We called it Empire Day.
Little known and appreciated is that, for many years — as part of his imperial rounds — Emperor Norton hopped the ferry every week and visited Oakland.
So, this coming September 17th — the third Empire Day— we celebrate with a Sunday afternoon ferry ride and family-friendly outing to the city that anchors the eastern end of the Emperor Norton Bridge.
The Emperor rode for free. So...
Round-trip ferry tickets are free to Emissaries of the Empire a.k.a. members of the Campaign.
Is your Emissary card up-to-date?
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Over the course of several months in 1873, Emperor Norton issued a series of Proclamations calling out the exploitation of Native American people; urging a peaceable resolution to the Modoc War that was taking place at the time; and warning that the execution of Captain Jack and other Modoc leaders — a punishment mandated by an Army court-martial and eventually carried out — would only make matters worse.
The Emperor's Bridge Campaign has discovered a May 1873 diary entry — by a 13-year-old boy living in Oakland — that further illuminates the Emperor's take on the Modoc War and on Native Americans in general.
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The conventional wisdom is that Emperor Norton was solely a San Francisco figure — a creature of the streets, parks, libraries, lecture halls and newspapers of his adopted city. In fact, the Emperor was a very well-known presence in Oakland and Berkeley, as well, making weekly visits to both places — and sometimes staying for days or weeks at a time. Please join The Emperor's Bridge Campaign for a special event with local historian Richard Schwartz, exploring an overlooked — but important — part of the Emperor's story.
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"As everyone knows, the Emperor Norton I. visits this city every Monday." So wrote the Oakland Tribune newspaper on 30 December 1879, a little more than a week before the Emperor died on 8 January 1880.
Although Emperor Norton often is pigeonholed as a creature of San Francisco, the truth is that he spent quite a bit of time visiting places that were outside the seat of his Empire. Here's a look at two of those places — Oakland and the adjacent Brooklyn, Calif. — as well as two of the Emperor's proclamations that were datelined "Brooklyn."
Images include: the original Oakland Tribune item; archival 1850s-'70s maps of Oakland, Brooklyn and Alameda; and two "Brooklyn proclamations" of 1872. Bonus: The story of The Tom Collins Hoax of 1874.
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