Emperor Norton claimed to have arrived in San Francisco in November 1849, on a ship from Rio de Janeiro.
After the Emperor’s death, Theodor Kirchhoff — a friend of the Emperor’s who was a German poet and essayist — supplied a name for the ship: the Franzeska. (Actually, Kirchhoff said “Franzika” — but, that’s a small point.)
All of the Emperor’s major and minor 20th-century biographers ran with this narrative — even though it never has been independently documented.
Norton's San Francisco arrival narrative remains undocumented — BUT...
Here, we present our discovery of two previously unreported episodes from Joshua Norton’s first several months in San Francisco that appear to support his claim to have arrived in San Francisco in November 1849 — even if they don’t put him on the Franzeska:
Norton’s paid notice of a temporary business address in early May 1850, a few weeks before he arrived at what usually is regarded as his first recorded business address, and — even earlier —
what may be Norton’s signature on a February 1850 open letter published in the Daily Alta newspaper.
Joshua’s signature on the open letter would make this letter the earliest known newspaper reference to Joshua Norton in San Francisco.
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The conventional “wisdom” is that Joshua Norton arrived in San Francisco in 1849 with a $40,000 bequest from the estate of his father, John Norton, who had died in 1848.
But, if Norton arrived with $40,000, he almost certainly didn’t get it from his father — who had died insolvent and broke.
So, what was the source of Joshua Norton’s original funding — $40,000 or otherwise?
Andrew Smith Hallidie, the “father of the cable car,” knew Joshua Norton as Emperor — and probably before that as well.
In 1888, Hallidie published an article suggesting that Norton had arrived in San Francisco as a “representative and confidant” of English backers.
This is quite different from the account one often hears.
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The short answer is: It seems not.
But, the question invites a deep dive into the history of Christmas trees and Christmas decorations, more broadly, in San Francisco’s Union Square.
Pull up a chair for the long answer. It’s a fascinating and occasionally surprising story that includes some wonderful rarely seen archival photographs of Christmas in Union Square over the last century.
Bonus: Research for this article produced dates (years) for three photographs of Christmas trees in Union Square that previously either were incorrectly or imprecisely dated or were undated.
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Here's a "mystery" about Emperor Norton that may be less mysterious than many seem to think. Despite persistent speculation that Joshua Norton left San Francisco for a period of months or years just before declaring himself Emperor in 1859, the available evidence points to a narrative in which, most likely, the eventual Emperor remained a resident of the City from his arrival until his death.
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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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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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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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