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

Scenes from the Emperor Norton Devotion of Melvin Belli

August 16, 2024 / John Lumea

The legendary San Francisco attorney Melvin Mouron Belli (1907–1996) was — among many other things — an enthusiast of the Emperor Norton.

No doubt, this — and Melvin Belli’s way with a pen — is why William Drury enlisted Belli to write the Foreword for his 1986 biography of the Emperor.

Throughout his very public life, Belli repeatedly and habitually associated himself with Emperor Norton.

As shown in the scenes documented here...

an Emperor Norton cosplayer who "knighted" Belli at the 1960 Belli-staged dedication of two Gold Rush-era buildings that Belli had restored — one of which he would use for his law office
Belli's own cosplaying of the Emperor for a San Francisco Examiner magazine feature in 1987
Belli's interviews comparing public birthday parties he threw for himself in 1982 and 1987 to imagined birthday celebrations for Emperor Norton in the Emperor's day

...Belli invoked the Emperor in ways that suggested a link between his fight for justice and his flair for the eccentric.

Indeed, Belli's Norton-flavored theatrics helped his audiences to see that — as with Emperor Norton — his own eccentricity was a key to his influence.

Click below for stories, photographs, newspaper clippings, and video.

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categories / Research, Places, Legacy, Original sources
tags / Melvin Belli, Belli Building, Genella Building, 722 Montgomery, 728 Montgomery, cosplay, cosplayer, Earle Wright, birthday party, Mike Douglas Show, San Francisco Examiner, William Drury, 1959, 1960, 1982, 1986, 1987

A Tale of Two Storeships

November 21, 2023 / John Lumea

For some eight decades, maybe more, the story has circulated in Emperor Norton biographies and in Nortonland more broadly that Joshua Norton owned the Genessee — the storeship that “received” the hundred tons of rice that Joshua’s firm bought off a ship in San Francisco Bay in December 1852.

According to this story, the Genessee was a major asset of Joshua Norton & Co., with the firm using the storeship as a warehouse and doing a brisk business in renting out space in the ship to other merchants.

In fact, the only contemporaneous documentation of a connection between Joshua Norton and the Genessee makes it very clear that Joshua was the renter. He did not own the Genessee — he simply rented warehouse space there, as many other traders and merchants did.

However, we recently uncovered a previously undocumented newspaper ad which suggests that — more than two years earlier, in August 1850 — Joshua Norton did lease space in a different storeship, the Orator, with the intention of sub-leasing this space to others.

Read on for documentation of the original arrivals of the Genessee and the Orator in San Francisco — of when these cargo / passenger ships were sold and converted into storeships — of how Joshua Norton’s path intersected with the Genessee and the Orator — and of these ships’ later fates.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / ship, storeship, Genessee, Orator, California Street Wharf, Ruiz v. Norton, California Supreme Court, James McCormic, Ferdinand Vassault, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1856, 1882, 1939, 1986

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

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

A Funeral Cortege "Two Miles Long"? Not Really.

May 22, 2023 / John Lumea

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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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / funeral, cortege, Lockhart & Porter, 16 O'Farrell Street, Masonic Cemetery, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Daily Intelligencer, William Drury, Dodd Mead & Company, 1880, 1986

Joshua Norton at the Transamerica Pyramid

December 14, 2022 / John Lumea

For some 35 years, students of the Emperor Norton story have followed William Drury’s account, in his 1986 biography of the Emperor, of the events surrounding Joshua Norton’s declaration of himself as Emperor on 17 September 1859.

According to Drury: George Fitch was editor of the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin on that day. Fitch’s office was in an upstairs room at 517 Clay Street. Joshua Norton marched his Proclamation into Fitch’s office that morning, and Fitch published it that afternoon.

But, that’s not how it went.

The Bulletin didn’t have an outpost on Clay Street until 1861. In 1859, the paper’s only offices were on Montgomery Street — on a site now occupied by the Transamerica pyramid.

And: Although George Fitch was a partner at the Bulletin in September 1859, he didn’t emerge as “the editor” — as the one with the power to decide what would and would not be published in the paper — until later.

That power resided with the person who actually was the editor on the day Joshua Norton appeared: James W. Simonton.

Read on for another course correction from The Emperor Norton Trust.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Places, Original sources
tags / Joshua Norton, San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, Montgomery Street, Merchant Street, Montgomery Block, 517 Clay Street, Christian O. Gerberding, C.O. Gerberding, James King of William, Thomas Sim King, Thomas S. King, James W. Simonton, George Kenyon Fitch, George K. Fitch, George Fitch, William Drury, Transamerica Pyramid, 1855, 1856, 1859, 1860, 1861

San Francisco Rice Imports From Late 1852 to Early 1853 Point to Market Specifics of Joshua Norton’s Gambit

May 22, 2022 / John Lumea

For years, the popular narrative of events leading up Joshua Norton's fateful rice contract of December 1852 has followed the claim of William Drury, in his 1986 biography of Emperor Norton, (1) that Joshua and his partners had connected to the only rice cargo in San Francisco harbor, and (2) that, before that, no rice had been arriving in the city at all.

But, this version of events is not reflected in the daily and weekly reports of rice cargoes that were published in the "Importations" column of the Daily Alta California, one of the city's leading newspapers during this period.

These reports show that the rice cargo that Joshua Norton & Co. contracted for was the largest shipment that had been seen in San Francisco in about a month — but not the only one. In fact, three rice shipments totaling well over 100 barrels had arrived over the previous 10 days. And, shipments of varying sizes had been coming in all along — generally three or four per week.

In other words: There had been a "slow flow" of rice coming in to the city — but not "no flow."

William Drury hyped the severity of the shortage for dramatic effect.

To illustrate the point, the following article includes, from the Daily Alta's "Importations" column, a comprehensive listing of rice cargoes arriving in San Francisco from September 1852 through January 1853 — the period from four months before Joshua Norton, on 22 December 1852, inked his deal with Ruiz, Hermanos, to buy their 200,000-lb. shipload until the Ruiz brothers sued him for non-payment and breach of contract on 21 January 1853.

To our knowledge, this is the first such listing that has been compiled and published in the context of Norton studies.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / San Francisco, rice, imports, cargo, ships, shipping, shortage, Glide, Joshua Norton, Joshua Norton & Co., Ruiz, Ruiz brothers, Ruiz v. Norton, Daily Alta California, Goddefroy & Sillem, William Drury, Allen Stanley Lane, legend, 1852, 1853

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 Time Emperor Norton Lost His Platform But Kept His Dignity

April 12, 2022 / John Lumea

What arguably is one of the most pivotal episodes in Emperor Norton's career has received scant attention.

In December 1870, the Emperor named the Black-owned Pacific Appeal newspaper his "weekly Imperial organ." From then until spring 1875, the Appeal and its editor, Peter Anderson, published some 250 of the Emperor's Proclamations.

But, in May 1875, the Appeal published a Proclamation in which Emperor Norton called out real estate developer Charles Peters for making false promises that were likely to bring harm to the unwitting immigrants who bought his lots in a swampy area at the southern tip of San Francisco that was being billed as Newark.

Peters sued Anderson for libel. Anderson retracted the Proclamation, throwing Emperor Norton under the bus in the process — and forbidding the Emperor from bringing the Appeal any more Proclamations. This is why published Proclamations from the Emperor become much more scarce from mid 1875 until his death in January 1880.

It appears that William Drury, in his 1986 biography of Emperor Norton, was the first to publish anything about this. But, apart from reproducing the offending Proclamation and an excerpt from Anderson's retraction, Drury has only a half-page's worth of sentences to spend on the affair.

In giving the matter such short shrift, Drury side-steps the most important questions: What could have prompted Peter Anderson to break with the Emperor in such a way? And, was Emperor Norton actually right about Charles Peters and his real estate scheme?

In short: Bill Drury leaves a big gap at the very point when big questions need answering.

Drawing on newspaper accounts from 1874–76, the following deep-dive seeks to close the gap and finds that Emperor Norton looks the best of all who were involved — in part, because he was utterly true to himself.

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categories / Research, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / Newark, Newark Land Company, Newark Land Association, Charles R. Peters, Charles Peters, Pacific Appeal, lawsuit, libel, land, real estate, immigrants, Oakland Tribune, Oakland Daily Transcript, William Drury, 1874, 1875, 1876

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 Latter-Day Twain-ification of an Early Theatrical Depiction of Emperor Norton

August 18, 2021 / John Lumea

Emperor Norton biographer William Drury made the grandiose claim, in 1986, that the first theatrical depiction of Emperor Norton took place on 17 September 1861 — the second anniversary of the Emperor’s self-declaration in 1859 — and that this was the inaugural production of the theater itself, which opened on this date.

This isn’t true. And, that’s putting it mildly.

But, as born out by historical newspaper documents from 1860 and 1861 — probably getting their first truly public broadcast here — what is true is interesting on its own.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Places
tags / Tucker's, Tucker's Hall, Academy of Music, Norton the First, Emperor for a Day, burlesque, melodeon, The Golden Era, San Francisco Evening Bulletin, San Francisco Morning Call, Walter Bray, Montgomery Street, William Drury, 1859, 1860, 1861

Bill Drury's "Emperor Norton Bridge" Petition of 1986

July 12, 2021 / John Lumea

The late Phil Frank is known and even beloved in Norton circles for a particular series of his Farley comics with which — between September and December 2004 — Frank sought to educate the San Francisco Chronicle’s readership about Emperor Norton while also taking up the cause of naming the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge after the Emp.

The series is credited with having built much of the momentum for the introduction and passage of a San Francisco Board of Supervisors resolution in December 2004 calling for the new Eastern section of the Bay Bridge to be named the Emperor Norton Bridge.

What appears to have escaped the notice of most Nortonians, even those who consider themselves “tuned in” on bridge matters, is that (a) Frank had weighed in on the “Emperor Norton Bridge” imperative 18 years earlier, with a shorter series of Farley comics published in October 1986 — and that (b) this earlier series was prompted by an “Emperor Norton Bridge” petition drive launched and advanced in 1986 by William Drury, whose new biography on the Emperor was being published, promoted and reviewed at the same time.

This “memory rescue” of a key moment in “Emperor Norton Bridge” advocacy includes archival audio of a 2004 NPR interview with Phil Frank, in which Frank references the earlier petition, as well as the complete — and rarely seen — series of Frank’s 1986 Farley comics that were inspired by the petition.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Bay Bridge, Tributes
tags / Emperor Norton Bridge, petition, William Drury, Bill Drury, Phil Frank, Farley, audio, 1986, 2004, 2013

Joshua Norton of Jackson Street

May 17, 2021 / John Lumea

Two of the most basic modern assumptions about the locations and business enterprises of Joshua Norton in 1852 San Francisco appear not to bear scrutiny.

The assumptions — that Joshua Norton held forth from facilities that he “built” on 3 of the 4 corners of Sansome and Jackson Streets, and that one of these facilities was a rice mill — were espoused and may, in part, have been created by Norton’s 1986 biographer, William Drury.

But, Drury’s claims were undocumented. A deep-dive into the documentary record points to a different picture.

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categories / Research, Places, Original sources
tags / Joshua Norton, Sansome Street, Jackson Street, Battery, rice, rice mill, cigars, 92 Jackson, 95 Jackson, 113 Jackson, Samuel Hort, James M. Parker, Daily Alta California, directory, newspaper, Hubert Howe Bancroft, William Drury, 1851, 1852, 1853

Emperor Norton, Schizophrenic. Or Not.

May 22, 2017 / John Lumea

The conventional wisdom, advanced by Norton biographer William Drury and many others, is that Joshua Norton was a "high-functioning schizophrenic." But, accepting that Norton struggled with some form of mental illness, is schizophrenia really the best way to explain it? Here's a different take worth considering.

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categories / Outside Observations, Commentary
tags / mental illness, histrionic personality disorder, depression, schizophrenia, reinvention, Joel GAzis-SAx, William Drury

OPEN QUESTION No. 2: Did Joshua Norton Really Arrive in San Francisco With a $40,000 Inheritance That He Built Into a Quarter-Million-Dollar Fortune in 3 Years?

April 12, 2017 / John Lumea

According to the "received" version of the Emperor Norton story: Joshua Norton inherited $40,000 from his father's estate. At around the same time, news of the Gold Rush reached South Africa. Joshua sailed west to seek his fortune in San Francisco, where he arrived in November 1849 with the $40,000 — a nest egg that he parlayed into $250,000 within three years.

But is this how it really went down? Not likely, according to the available evidence.

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categories / Original sources, Open Questions, Research
tags / inheritance, John Norton, Louis Norton, South Africa, Cape Town, Grahamstown, Robert Ernest Cowan, Jane Austen, William Drury, $40000, $250000

OPEN QUESTION No. 1: How and When Did Joshua Norton Get to San Francisco?

February 10, 2017 / John Lumea

The familiar version of Joshua Norton's San Francisco immigration story — a narrative developed primarily between 1879 and 1939 by that period's leading writers about Emperor Norton — holds that the future Emperor made his way from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro, where he booked passage on the Hamburg ship Franzeska and arrived in San Francisco on 23 November 1849.

The "story of the story" — of how this narrative came together and was canonized — is interesting on its own. What has yet to surface, however, is any primary-source documentation verifying Joshua's passage on any particular ship or his arrival in San Francisco in November 1849.

Absent such evidence, what we really have in the "received version" of this story — as with a number of details about the Emperor's pre-imperial life, in particular — is more a work of "collaborative intuition," a theory in search of documentation.

This is the first in an occasional series of articles on aspects of the Emperor Norton biography that should be regarded as "open questions" — and opportunities for research.

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categories / Original sources, Histories, Open Questions, Research
tags / Rio de Janeiro, Franzeska, San Francisco Chronicle, Theodor Kirchhoff, Robert Ernest Cowan, Allen Stanley Lane, Weekly Alta California, Daily Alta California, William Drury, Nicholas Deach

Two Traces of Allen Stanley Lane

March 08, 2016 / John Lumea

For nearly 50 years, Allen Stanley Lane's 1939 biography of Emperor Norton was recognized as the standard reference on the subject. But, as often as Lane is cited in Norton studies and within "the Norton community" more generally, it appears that there is no online record of Lane — apart from references to the fact that he wrote his book.

There appears to be no mention of Lane's personal life — or of anything else he might have written or produced about Emperor Norton.

So it's been gratifying, over the last couple weeks, to have been "gifted" with a couple more documentary signs of Lane's existence.

Comment 0 Likes

categories / Research
tags / Allen Stanley Lane, Knott's Berry Farm, Ghost Town News, David Warren Ryder, California State Library, William Drury, William M. Kramer, Gwen Smith

On the Trail of the Elusive "Frisco" Proclamation

February 12, 2016 / John Lumea

No proclamation attributed to Emperor Norton more often is actually quoted than the one in which he is said to have railed against the word "Frisco." But did the Emperor actually write this? As it turns out, the source of the "Frisco" proclamation is far from clear. In this wide-ranging, link-packed essay, we detail our quest for the origins of the decree and find that all roads may lead to 1939.

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categories / Histories, Commentary, Proclamations, Open Questions, Research
tags / Frisco, David Warren Ryder, William Drury

The Eights Have It!

May 17, 2015 / John Lumea

Of the hundreds of Norton-ish folks that we've met over the course of the last year or so, some of those who harbor the deepest fondness for Emperor Norton and his story identify with one of two groups: the Jewish community or numismatists, the latter being the proper term for historians of coin and currency.

Here's a little discovery that brings both groups together — and that advances the case for 1818 as the year of the Emperor's birth.

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categories / Histories, Research
tags / Emperor Norton's birth date, The Shekel, American Israel Numismatic Association, Edward Schuman, William Drury, Allen Stanley Lane, Fred R. Marckhoff, Calcoin News, Bernard Postal, Lionel Koppman

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