Is This Really Joshua Norton?

July 16, 2025 / John Lumea

For nearly a century, the collection of the Society of California Pioneers has included a photograph whose subject has been identified — including by the authors of the two published biographies of Emperor Norton and by The Emperor Norton Trust — as Joshua Abraham Norton.

There are many good reasons for believing that the gentleman in the photo is not, in fact, Joshua Norton — and no good reasons, it seems, for continuing to believe that it is.

Herewith, a reassessment.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / photograph, Society of California Pioneers, Charles Beebe Turrill, daguerrotype, collodion, fashion, jacket, beard, friendly muttonchops, hulihee, Civil War, Ambrose Burnside, Kalakaua, Allen Stanley Lane, William Drury, 1851, 1861, 1869, 1871, 1878, 1927, 1928, 1939, 1986

Mr. Cowan's Opportunity

June 30, 2025 / John Lumea

More than a decade ago, in February 2015, The Emperor Norton Trust issued its first research on Emperor Norton's birth date. In a talk that we published online the same month, I argued for a birth date of 4 February 1818.

In that talk, I outlined the role of the Emperor Norton Memorial Association in securing a new burial plot and headstone for the Emperor in 1934 — after his remains were exhumed from San Francisco’s Masonic Cemetery as part of the city’s great “cemetery eviction” of that period — and I laid at the feet of Robert Ernest Cowan (1862–1942) much of the blame for the incorrect "1819" birth date that the Association inscribed on the headstone that they placed at the Emperor’s new grave in Woodlawn Memorial Park, Colma, Calif.

In 1923, Cowan had published an essay on Emperor Norton in the new California Historical Society (CHS) Quarterly — of which he was the inaugural editor. In the essay, Cowan faked an 1819 birth date for the Emperor by falsifying an 1865 item in the Daily Alta newspaper.

Apparently no one caught this at the time — and probably wouldn’t have said anything if they had. Indeed, in 1934 Cowan remained deeply influential and respected in California history circles. His account of Emperor Norton still was regarded as a reference standard. And there had been no challenge to Cowan’s 1923 claim of an 1819 birth date for the Emperor. So, the Association just went with their friend Cowan — regarding the question of the Emperor’s birth date as having been settled years earlier.

We thought it was no more complicated than that.

Comes new evidence — which we publish here on the 91st anniversary of the dedication of Emperor Norton's 1934 headstone:

Cowan revived and even ramped up his decade-old birth date fakery in early 1934, and did so while he was president of the board of the California Historical Society — a board that included 2 of the 4 officers of the new Emperor Norton Memorial Association — one of whom was the Association’s president.

It seems that — more than we knew: In 1934, the fix was in for a falsified 1819 birth date on the Emperor's headstone.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Tributes
tags / Emperor Norton's birth date, Robert Ernest Cowan, Emperor Norton Memorial Association, Woodlawn Memorial Park, Woodlawn Cemetery, headstone, Forgotten Characters of San Francisco, talk, speech, presentation, book, Ward Ritchie, Ward Ritchie Press, Historical Society of Southern California, California Historical Society, 1818, 1819, 1923, 1934, 1936, 1938, 1964

"Harbor Emperor" Switcheroo?

June 26, 2025 / John Lumea

In 1968, Crowley Maritime built a new 500-passenger sightseeing vessel for its Red & White fleet based at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Having decided to name its new vessel the Harbor Emperor, Crowley commissioned Elwin Millerick, a folk sculptor in Santa Rosa, Calif., to hand-carve a 5-foot-tall wooden figurehead of Emperor Norton for the bow.

The Emperor Norton figurehead has been photographed thousands of times over the decades and has become a fond feature of the modern Norton pop culture of San Francisco.

Pull up a chair for my theory that — at a minimum — the head and the hat of today’s Harbor Emperor figurehead are not original to 1968 and that — whether because of an accident, vandalism, or rot — they were substantially modified or switched out entirely sometime in the 1970s.

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categories / Research, Original sources, Tributes, ARENA
tags / sculpture, statue, figurehead, wood, hand-carved, Harbor Emperor, vessel, sightseeing, Crowley, Red & White, Blue & Gold, Elwin Millerick, Santa Rosa, 1968, 1970s, 1979, 1985, 1997, 2005, 2012

Two Houseworth Postscripts

June 18, 2025 / John Lumea

This follow-up to my August 2015 article, “The Houseworth Photographs,” updates the record of photographs of Emperor Norton by the studio of Thomas Houseworth & Co. with (a) a much better — if still flawed — copy of a c.1874 photograph and (b) a sharper date for a later Houseworth photo of the Emp.

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categories / Research, Original sources
tags / photographs, photographer, photography, Thomas Houseworth & Co., Thomas Houseworth, 9 Montgomery Street, 12 Montgomery Street, celebrity portrait, society portrait, cabinet card, San Francisco directories, Society of California Pioneers, Gino Robair, 1872, 1873, 1875, 1876, 1877, 2015

Revealing the Obscure Publishing Origin of an Early Engraving of Emperor Norton

June 12, 2025 / John Lumea

In summer 2016, The Emperor Norton Trust launched its digital ARchive of Emperor Norton in the Arts (ARENA) with 40-some images — including an intriguing illustration featuring Emperor Norton that appeared to be an early engraving created during the Emperor's lifetime.

The illustration appears in the 1964 book The Forgotten Characters of San Francisco. But, apart from a credit to Robert Grannis Cowan — the son of Robert Ernest Cowan (1862–1942), whose title essay anchors the book, and also apparently (the younger Cowan) the private owner of the illustration who gave permission for it to be reproduced — the book provides no details about the artist, original source, or provenance of the illustration.

For the last nine years, this has been the extent of our knowledge about this work.

A few weeks ago, seeking intelligence about an elusive cabinet card of Emperor Norton, I requested from the Society of California Pioneers some catalog information about the Emperor-related items in the organization’s collection.

Included in the information the Society sent to me was an unbidden clue about the enigmatic illustration — a clue that has enabled me to solve the mystery and, in the process, crack a window into the the elusive history of one of San Francisco’s most influential early engravers and one of the city’s earliest satirical magazines.

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categories / Research, Original sources, ARENA
tags / Art, illustration, engraving, magazine, Pascal Loomis, Puck (San Francisco magazine), James F. Swift, Clay Street, Harrison Eastman, Hutching's California Magazine, Forgotten Characters of San Francisco, Ward Ritchie Press, Robert Grannis Cowan, lithograph, George Washington II, monogram, 1861, 1862, 1865, 1866, 1964

Emperor Norton Through the Eyes of a Young San Francisco Artist in 1879

May 14, 2025 / John Lumea

In 1879, an 18-year-old Charles Andrew Gunnison (1861–1897) took a trek across the United States from his home in San Francisco, visiting several cities on the Eastern seaboard and venturing up to Montreal and Quebec City before returning to San Francisco via Panama and Central America.

Gunnison brought with him an autograph book that he converted into a sketchbook to help him record what he saw.

One of the last sketches in the book — done as Gunnison arrived back home at the end of his trip — is of Emperor Norton.

Apparently drawn in December 1879, a month before the Emperor’s death in January 1880, this is one of the last (and possibly the last) extant artistic rendering of Emperor Norton — painting, sketch, or otherwise — done during the Emperor’s lifetime.

A separate sketch on the same page and another sketch on the previous page provide clues that reflect the anti-Chinese mood of San Francisco —and possibly also of the artist — in 1879. Given the Emperor's own long-standing defense of the Chinese, the juxtaposed sketches make for a telling — if unintended — commentary.

Charles Gunnison died only 18 years later. One hopes that, if — in 1879 — a late-teen Gunnison did share in the prevailing anti–Chinese attitudes of 1879 San Francisco, he was able to wrest free of those attitudes before the city did.

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categories / ARENA, Research, Original sources
tags / Art, drawing, sketch, sketchbook, pencil, Charles Andrew Gunnison, travel, Isaac Smith Kalloch, California Workingmen's Party, Denis Kearney, mayor, Chinese, San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, cartoon, 1875, 1879, 1880

Was Emperor Norton Channeling George Washington?

May 06, 2025 / John Lumea

On the verge of leaving office in March 1797, George Washington in September 1796 issued a Farewell Address — initially published in a Philadelphia paper and thereafter widely distributed. Washington's overriding concern in the address was the danger of factions and what he called "the spirit of party."

Sixty-four years later, in February 1860 — in the nearest thing to an "inaugural" address for his nascent Empire — Emperor Norton sounded the same themes.

Indeed, by 1856, Joshua Norton was showing the interest and inclination towards "independent" and "No Party" platforms and candidates that would shape his reign as Emperor.

But, there are other parallels between Norton and Washington — the date each chose to issue a defining statement for publication; their use of the same key words and phrases — that make it worth asking whether the Emperor's apparent echo of Washington is more than a coincidence.

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categories / Research, Commentary, Proclamations, Original sources
tags / party, faction, independent, George Washington, farewell address, September 17, 1787, 1796, 1856, 1858, 1859, 1860, 1869, 1875, 1876