The Emperor Norton Trust

In 1939, David Warren Ryder published a brief “book,” San Francisco’s Emperor Norton, in which Ryder claimed — without any evidence — that Emperor Norton issued a proclamation against the use of the word “Frisco” for San Francisco. According to Ryder, the Emperor wrote that “Frisco” had “no linguistic or other warrant.”

Leaving aside Ryder’s contentious — and still unproven — claim of imperial authorship for this so-called proclamation, the embedded claim that “Frisco” has no “linguistic warrant”…warrants scrutiny.

Recently, I uncovered the ship journal of Isaac Wallis Baker, who captained the bark San Francisco on its Gold Rush voyage from Beverly, Mass., to San Francisco between August 1849 and January 1850.

In one entry from December 1849, written aboard the San Francisco when the ship was in the Pacific off northern Mexico, Baker pens a poem in which the opening verse rhymes “Francisco” with a riff that points to an obsolete 16th-century word, “frisco,” that the Oxford English Dictionary gives two meanings: (a) “a brisk movement in dancing; a caper,” and (b) “a term of endearment.”

Baker’s journal was documented in 1923 — but it appears that this entry has remained buried and unnoted for the last century.

If you like “Frisco,” you’re gonna love this.

Even if not, you’ll learn something new!

In June 1849, English-born composer, singer, dramatic recitalist, impressionist, travel writer, and humorist Stephen Charnock Massett (1819–1898) gave a performance at a schoolhouse on Portsmouth Plaza, San Francisco, that is credited as the first professional show in the city.

Twenty-two years later, Massett was a bonafide national, international — and San Francisco-identified — celebrity who went by his pen and stage name “Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville.”

In April 1871, while Massett was living in San Francisco, the city’s Daily Alta newspaper published a column of his, in which he characterized the Emperor Norton as one of “the geniuses that Frisco has sent broadcast to the world.”

The other cultural exports on Massett’s list include Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and Charles Warren Stoddard.

Read on to learn more about the fascinating Stephen Massett and his 1871 column giving props to the Emperor.

In the Trivia Time feature that accompanied his 19 September 2020 history column for the San Francisco Chronicle, historian Gary Kamiya stated that Emperor Norton imposed a $25 fine for using the word “Frisco.”

In the Trivia Time that ran with his next column, published on 3 October 2020, Kamiya issued a correction and cited Emperor Norton Trust founder John Lumea as the authority for saying that “no primary documents have been found to support this claim.”

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.

It stands to reason that The Emperor’s Bridge Campaign* is one of the few organizations or individuals to be actively researching the question of whether Emperor Norton wrote the anti-"Frisco” proclamation so often attributed to him. So it was gratifying, a couple of days ago, to have our efforts acknowledged by the respected San Francisco-based magazine Mother Jones.

* In December 2019, The Emperor's Bridge Campaign adopted a new name: The Emperor Norton Trust.

In a brief article last year, veteran San Francisco journalist Lynn Ludlow offered a fascinating, erudite and thought-provoking account of why early Herb Caen had it all wrong on "Frisco."

Herb Caen had his reason's for not liking "Frisco." But perhaps they had very little to do with Emperor Norton.