Norton was born in England but spent most of his early life in South Africa. He sailed west after the death of his mother in 1846 and his father in 1848, arriving in San Francisco possibly in November 1849. He lost his fortune investing in Peruvian rice to sell in China due to a Chinese rice shortage. He re-emerged in September 1859, laying claim to the position of Emperor of the United States.
About Emperor Norton in brief
Norton was born in England but spent most of his early life in South Africa. He sailed west after the death of his mother in 1846 and his father in 1848, arriving in San Francisco possibly in November 1849. Norton initially made a living as a businessman, but he lost his fortune investing in Peruvian rice to sell in China due to a Chinese rice shortage. He re-emerged in September 1859, laying claim to the position of Emperor of the United States. On January 8, 1880, Norton collapsed at the corner of California and Dupont streets and died before he could be given medical treatment. Norton has been immortalized as the basis of characters in the literature of Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christopher Moore, Morris and René Goscinny, Selma Lagerlöf, and Neil Gaiman. The Emperor’s Bridge Campaign, a nonprofit that engages in Norton research and education, took its bicentennial date as February 4, 1818, starting its series at 200 years of Norton’s birth. In a 1923 essay published by the California Historical Society, Robert Ernest Cowan claimed that Norton was born on February4, 1819. However, the passenger lists for the La Belle Alliance, the ship that carried Norton and his family from England to South Africa, list him as having been two years old when the ship set sail in February 1820. The best available evidence points to February 4 of that year as the date of Norton’s birth.
This information appears not to have come to light until after 1934, the year that Norton’s headstone was placed at his grave in Colma, California — when Cowan’s account remained prominent. This may help to explain why those who had the stone used 1819 as the birth year. The Daily Alta edition of The Alta in 1865 included an item in which the Alta wished Emperor Norton a happy birthday, indicating that his birth date would line up with 1818 — that would be February 4. Alliances, when it came to Norton, were largely limited to those who were related to him by blood or marriage. He died in 1880 at the age of 65, suggesting that 1814 could be the year of his birth. Some considered him insane or eccentric, but citizens of San Francisco celebrated his imperial presence and his proclamations, such as his order that the U.S. Congress be dissolved by force and his numerous decrees calling for the construction of a bridge and tunnel crossing San Francisco Bay to connect San Francisco with Oakland. In 1863 he took the secondary title of “Protector of Mexico’ after Napoleon III invaded Mexico. In 1859 he proclaimed himself “Emperor of the US,” a title he held until his death in 1880. He was known as “The Emperor of America,’” but his real title was “Empress of the USA.” He was also known as the “Great Emperor”
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This page is based on the article Emperor Norton published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
