The Emperor Norton Trust

The Library of Congress, at the request of The Emperor Norton Trust, has updated its information for Emperor Norton, changing the Emperor’s birth year from 1819 to 1818 and adding 4 February 1818 as the birth date.

In its updated record, the Library has added a citation crediting the Trust as the source of the research that the Library used to make these changes.

The many research institutions and databases that use Library of Congress records as the basis for their listings now will be able to use the Library’s updated record for Joshua Abraham Norton to update their own subject headings for him.

As this happens, 1818 will become more and more widely accepted as the year when the Emperor was born.

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.

On a beautiful if blustery afternoon yesterday in Colma, about 40 friends of Emperor Norton gathered for the laying of a special historical plaque for the Emperor at Home of Peace — the cemetery of Congregation Emanu-El, where the Emperor attended synagogue every Saturday.

How two of the Emperor's most loyal subjects sought to celebrate him but — despite their best intentions — wound up leading a generation to get one of the most basic facts about him wrong. 

The following illustrated remarks were presented by Emperor's Bridge Campaign founder and president John Lumea at The Emperor's 197th Birthday, the Campaign's "party and presentation of recent findings" held on 3 February 2015 at the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics in San Francisco.

This past Tuesday evening (3 February) was a "school night." So, The Emperor's Bridge Campaign was delighted to welcome some 55-60 guests — including many new faces! — to the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics at 518 Valencia Street in San Francisco, for The Emperor's 197th Birthday, a "party and presentation of recent findings" in support of the Campaign.

Emperor Norton's biographer, William Drury, maintains that "February 4th" had nothing at all to do with "His Majesty's Birthday." But was Drury right?

Building on Campaign board member Joseph Amster's recent "rediscovery" of am 1865 newspaper item pointing to an 1818 birth date for Emperor Norton, Campaign founder John Lumea examines Robert Ernest Cowan's influential 1923 essay about the Emperor and finds that Cowan manipulated the same news item to make it appear to support his own theory that Emperor Norton was born in 1819.

In 1820, 2-year-old Joshua Norton emigrated with his parents and older brother from England to South Africa. They and the 4,000 others who participated in this colonization scheme came to be known as the 1820 Settlers. This week, in response to Board member Joseph Amster's recent "rediscovery" of an 1865 newspaper item pointing to an 1818 birth date for Joshua Norton, the leading historical and genealogical Web site documenting the story of the 1820 Settlers movement updated its birth date for Emperor Norton.

Combing through microfiche of old San Francisco newspapers at the San Francisco Public Library yesterday, Emperor's Bridge Campaign board member Joseph Amster stumbled across an item on the front page of the 4 February 1865 edition of the Daily Alta California. The item invites us to take a much closer look at a possible birth date for Emperor Norton that was dismissed by earlier biographers.