Some years ago, I happened upon a lengthy newspaper article — from the 1890s, if memory serves — with a list of honorarily named California redwoods. One of the trees carried the name “Emperor Norton” — so, I made a mental note and resolved to return to this “detective ground” in the future.
Recently, I was delighted to find photographic evidence of an “Emperor Norton” tree: an apparently unpublished stereocard by Eadweard Muybridge, dated 1868, showing a man in a deep bow before a redwood with an "Emperor Norton" sign affixed to it.
The Bancroft Library, which has the card, identifies the site of Muybridge's scene as "Probably in the Mariposa Grove, near Yosemite Valley."
In my effort to confirm this detail, I found multiple references — from the period between 1867 and 1910 — to "Emperor Norton" trees in both of the noted redwood sections of Yosemite: the one in Mariposa County and another in Calaveras County.
The evidence strongly suggests that the tree in Muybridge's stereograph is in Calaveras.
High-resolution image included.
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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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In 1872 — two years before the first commercially retailed photographic portrait of Emperor Norton — an editor in Oakland wondered whether there might be a market for photographs of the Emperor and how much collectors might be willing to pay.
Five years later, in 1877, a San Francisco paper carried an editorial on the prices paid at a recent New York sale of autographs of U.S. presidents, European monarchs, and other notables. The writer observed that Emperor Norton's signatures were "going at a low rate" and suggested that this would remain the case with the Emperor’s ongoing sales of signed promissory notes continuing to glut the market — but that, in the future, the Emperor’s signature could become a more precious commodity.
In light of the four- and five-figure sums now commanded by photographs and signed promissory notes of Emperor Norton, it’s worth noting these two early — and, we believe, previously unreported — indicators that, even during the Emperor’s lifetime, there were those who saw that the Emperor eventually could find his way to the collector’s market.
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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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In Colville’s San Francisco directory of 1856, Joshua Norton listed his “office” address as Pioneer Hall — the Society of California Pioneers’ headquarters and clubhouse on Portsmouth Square, San Francisco.
Joshua declared bankruptcy in 1856, so his living arrangements might have been unstable. But, he was affiliated with a Masonic lodge during this period — while he was not a member of the Pioneers.
So why did he list himself at Pioneer Hall rather than Masonic Hall (on Montgomery Street)?
Here’s a closer look at this episode, in which — apparently — Joshua Norton and the Pioneers were drawn into one anothers’ orbits and revealed things about one another in the process.
Includes a rarely seen 1861 photograph of Pioneer Hall after the Society had added “Pioneers” signage to the top of the building.
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The best-known vista of the 245-foot-tall clock tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building is from along Market Street, looking northeast.
The best-known street vista — but not the only one.
The clock tower also rises as the eastern visual terminus of Commercial Street.
On today’s Commercial Street, the tower is most readily seen from the 2-block stretch between Montgomery Street to the east and Grant Avenue to the west. This is the stretch adjacent to, and near, the former site of 624 Commercial between Montgomery and Kearny Streets — where Emperor Norton lived from 1864/65 until his death in 1880.
The view of the Ferry Building clock tower from here is one reason why The Emperor Norton Trust has proposal that the tower be named Emperor Norton Tower. You can read our proposal and commentaries by clicking the Learn More button at EmperorNortonTower.org.
Click through for a series of seven views of the clock tower photographed from the 7-block stretch of Commercial Street between Drumm Street and Grant Avenue during the first half of the tower’s 125-year life-so-far — the period between c.1900 and 1960.
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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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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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Much of the relevant background is in the title.
The rare, fine-grained, wonderfully textured photograph, a stereoview, is by J.J. Reilly.
It's beautiful.
What's left is to get your bearings and see the view — which you can do by clicking below!
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In three late-in-life studio portrait photographs — taken c.1878 by two different studios — Emperor Norton can be seen wearing a mysterious ring.
Were the rings shown in these photographs one and the same? Or were they different?
Was one, or both, a gift? If so: Did one, or both, of the rings feature an Emperor Norton insignia or inscription of some kind?
Was one a Masonic ring — a symbol the Emperor’s membership in Occidental Lodge No. 22 of Free and Accepted Masons?
Was the Emperor buried with one of these rings?
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In the mid to late 1870s, the Bradley & Rulofson studio created one of the seven photo-portraits of Emperor Norton the studio is known to have taken of the Emperor during his reign. The seated Emperor is holding his favorite walking stick, and his Chinese umbrella is propped against the chair.
The best-known version of this photograph appeared in a book published in 1964. The photo appears very dark — which adds to the mood but also obscures many details.
Here, we present a rarely seen brighter, more balanced — and more revealing — version of the photo that appeared in 1961.
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It appears that the earliest known photograph of Emperor Norton is a little earlier than we thought — and earlier than anyone else has said.
The case for the time frame that we focus on here draws on early artistic depictions of the Emperor and on one of the Emperor’s earliest sartorial choices, which is documented in an easy-to-miss newspaper item from May 1860.
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Last week, a long-rumored and probably unpublished pair of stereocard photographs of Emperor Norton on a street in San Francisco’s Chinatown appeared on Facebook.
The Emperor Norton Trust is delighted to be able to publish, for the first time, large, hi-res images of the original stereocard, courtesy of the previous owner.
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A little more than half of the 17 extant photographs of Emperor Norton have reliable dates attached. In this context, "date" means year.
Armed with one historical lead, a good set of links to early San Francisco directories, some basic detective skills and a little patience, we set out to pin down the date of a well-known photograph of Emperor Norton that had no date.
We found it.
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