Emperor of the United States: The Bizarre and Noble Story of Joshua Abraham Norton and His Cult Following in 19th Century San Francisco

 In November of 1849, during the frenzied height of the California Gold Rush, a ship from Rio de Janeiro docked in San Francisco harbor and off of the gangplank stepped Joshua Abraham Norton--the future Emperor of the United States of America!

Joshua Abraham Norton would one day proclaim himself to be the Emperor of the United States of America, however when he came ashore in late 1849 in the western frontier gold rush boomtown that was San Francisco, California at that time, no one in the city--not a single soul--had any idea who the hell he was.  

If they had known who he was they most probably would have thought that he was an unmitigated failure at life who was running from his foggy and somewhat sketchy past, and like most of the hundreds of souls who arrived daily at the port of San Francisco, was seeking to strike it rich overnight at one of California’s many gold prospecting sites.  Had anyone known who Joshua Abraham Norton was when he arrived in San Francisco, and had they simply thought that he had arrived there to strike it rich like so many others, they may very well have been right, but we don’t know that for sure because history doesn’t really tell us exactly why the Emperor of the United States of America came to the United States of America in the first place, and most likely, he was already rich when he got there.

Norton had spent at least the last decade, and perhaps his entire life from the time that he was born, living a rather transient life and drifting around the world from county to country and even continent to continent.  But when he arrived for the second time in America in the year 1849 all of that was about to change.

San Francisco Harbor ca. 1850

Joshua Abraham Norton was born in England on February 4, 1818--that much about his life we do know at least with some level of certainty because it was reported in the Daily Alta California, a 19th century rag sheet that flourished in San Francisco during the Civil War Era  and printed an article on February 4, 1865 that celebrated Norton’s supposed forty-seventh birthday.  Later in life, Norton and his exploits as “Emperor” would become so famous, and notorious at least in San Francisco that he would grab headlines even from the War Between the States.

We also know that he lived most of his early life in and around Cape Town, South Africa, and this may indicate that he came from a seafaring family, but then again, many if not most people in early Victorian Era South Africa had at least some connection to seafaring.  

Sometime around the age of thirty Joshua Abraham Norton left South Africa and sailed back to his native England, stopping in Liverpool, before records indicate that he came ashore in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, during the year 1845 for what would be his first visit to the United States.  

Then, for the next three and a half years, it’s as if Joshua Abraham Norton simply dropped off the face of the earth and all historical records of his activities, or whereabouts including ship’s logs and passenger manifests vanish until he boards that ship in Brazil and sails to the Gold Rush boomtown of San Francisco, California in 1849.

Later, once he declares himself to the be the Emperor of the United States of America, these missing three plus years in Norton’s life will become the source of much speculation and conjecture among those who know him, but all of that lay several years in the future, and for his part, Norton himself never does elaborate all that much on what he was doing, or on where he was, during the majority of the 1840’s.

Some sources say that Norton arrived in San Francisco harbor aboard a ship called the Franzeska with the enormous sum (especially for the time) of $40,000 in cash in his pocket that he had received from his father’s estate.  This would have been about the equivalent of $1.5 million in today’s money and would have been a very risky amount of cash to travel around the world with--but it’s not an entirely implausible speculation.

It is known that earlier in life, in South Africa, Norton had received a large sum of money from his father to start an undisclosed business with his younger brother, and that after that business failed, both Joshua Abraham Norton and his brother joined their father in the family business, sometime during the year 1843 or 1844 and this family business, most likely, had something to do with international commodities trading.

When the future Emperor arrived in California one of the first things that he did was to get involved in commodities trading and real estate speculation, and we know from contemporary newspapers, that by the early 1850’s Joshua Abraham Norton had established himself as one of the wealthiest and most well-respected citizens of the rapidly growing city of San Francisco.

In fact, even to this day, “Emperor” Joshua Abraham Norton remains one of San Francisco’s most well respected and admired citizens.  As recently as September of 2023 a street in the city’s financial district, the 600 block of San Francisco’s Commercial Street was renamed Emperor Norton Place, and the San Francisco Chronicle of September 18, 2023 said of him, “He’s often portrayed as a silly old guy who went bankrupt…but he spoke up for Chinese and African Americans who were discriminated against, and he attended churches of all denominations so he could better understand people and bring them all together.”

And maybe, when he arrived in San Francisco in 1849, and even as he began to make his fortune in the 1850’s, Joshua Abraham Norton had no idea he would bring the people of San Francisco together, but bring them together he did--as the Emperor of the United States of America.

He came to the United States with a lot of money, maybe from his father or maybe from somewhere else, and he did strike it rich in San Francisco in the early 1850’s as his fortune and influence continued to grow.  But we know that all of that fame and fortune took a downward turn in December of 1852 as a bad business deal left Joshua Abraham Norton headed towards bankruptcy.

Immigrants from China in San Francisco ca. 1870

Across the Pacific, in the year 1852 as the result of drought, earthquakes and endless civil war, China was wracked by one of the most devastating famines in its history; a famine that reportedly saw many desperate and impoverished peasants resort to cannibalism.  It was in that famine that the normally good natured, but wily businessman Joshua Abraham Norton sensed an opportunity.

In December of that year Norton bought an entire shipload of rice from Peru at the high price of .12 cents a pound which would be the equivalent of $5 a pound in today’s money and as of September 2024 the United States Bureau of Labor statistics reported that the average price in America today for a pound of rice is about $1.10!  Still, Norton gambled that he would be able to ship the rice to China and then turn a profit even at those exorbitant prices because of the desperation of the Chinese people due to the famine.  Well, needless to say, Norton’s gamble didn’t pay off, as international aid shipments to China increased, the weather in China improved and a tenuous state of peace began to reign over much of the nation.

Joshua Abraham Norton’s rice for profit scheme in China and the subsequent lawsuits against the Peruvian government that he entered into and lost in his desperate attempts to recoup his lost money were the beginning of his descent into near bankruptcy and did a lot to tarnish his reputation among the affluent local community in San Francisco.  Some say that the failure of his so-called “China Scheme” also marked the beginning of Joshua Abraham Norton’s descent into madness.  Because then, after several years outside the public eye, Norton did something completely unexpected.  He declared himself to be the Emperor of the United States!

In the summer of 1859 Norton drafted a manifesto and paid to have it run as an advertisement in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, a newspaper which, at that time, was known for its high moral standing and for its campaigns against political corruption.  Norton’s manifesto began simply by stating: “I, Joshua Norton formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for these last 9 years and 10 months of San Francisco, California, declare myself Emperor of these United States.”

Norton unabashedly stated that he was declaring himself to be Emperor of the United States out of a sense of civic duty.  According to him it was done, “At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of these United States citizens.”  Such a proclamation may clearly have been an indication that during the 1850’s Norton had indeed gone mad, either that, or he had the largest ego known to history or he was seeking some way to make atonement for the both morally and financially bankrupt “China Scheme” he had entered into several years prior.

Anyway, after declaring himself Emperor of the United States in the newspaper, Norton went on to request (on the eve of the American Civil War mind you) that representatives from each state of the Union meet him personally on the first day of February 1860 at the San Francisco Music Hall.

As crazy at it sounds for someone to declare themselves Emperor of the United States, it must be noted that Joshua Abraham Norton was a staunch abolitionist and an early outspoken believer in human equality even despite his attempt to exploit starving Chinese peasants for financial gain, so that his desire in declaring himself Emperor may have been to try and stave off Civil War in his adopted country, which at least according to him, he loved so much that he was ordained by God Himself to lead.

Needless to say, no one but Norton himself and perhaps several dozen intrigued citizens of San Francisco heeded the Emperor’s decree and actually showed up at the Music Hall, but Norton’s ramblings proved so popular with the public, and so adept at selling newspapers, that the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin went on publishing the Emperor’s so-called “decrees” for the next twenty years!

San Francisco Music Hall ca. 1860

He issued orders that called for the commanding general of the United States Army, Winfield Scott, to meet with him in San Francisco and other decrees that called on the entire United States Congress to come meet with him at the San Francisco Music Hall, but all of his decrees were ignored by both the army and the federal government.

In addition to publishing countless imperial decrees in San Francisco’s newspapers between 1859 and 1880 “Emperor” Joshua Abraham Norton designed an elaborate blue uniform with epaulets and a large distinctive hat that he took to wearing every day while he walked, or rode his large wheeled tricycle, through the city streets of the city that he loved, and in his own mind, ruled.

The 1870 United States census listed a Joshua Norton “50 years of age and residing at 624 Commercial Street,” and surprisingly the census of that year also listed his occupation as “Emperor”.

By proclaiming himself Emperor, it would appear that at least in the eyes of the many diverse and impoverished citizens of San Francisco, that Joshua Abraham Norton was able to regain a modicum of respect among the local populace and at a time when racial violence, particularly between Chinese immigrants and poor working class whites seemed to often run rampant in the city, Emperor Norton was known as someone who was able to keep the peace and bring disparate sides together to talk out their issues rather than resorting to violence and aggression.

Norton had paper money in the Emperor’s name printed and in many of San Francisco’s poorer communities and neighborhoods of the 1870’s Emperor Norton’s currency was accepted in local restaurants and dry goods stores, backed as it were, in good faith.

In fact, Norton was so inclusive that although his imperial career began with the publication of his manifesto in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin back in 1859, by 1870 after becoming disillusioned with the mainstream press and many of the false rumors that they had been publishing about him, Emperor Norton declared that the Pacific Appeal newspaper, which was entirely owned and operated by San Francisco’s black community, would be the only paper forthwith allowed to “officially” publish his imperial decrees.

On a rainy January day in 1880, while making his rounds through the city that he loved, Joshua Abraham Norton the Emperor of the United States of America suddenly collapsed on a street corner and died about six weeks short of his sixty-second birthday.

The San Francisco Morning Call the next day wrote, “On the reeking pavement, in the darkness of a moonless night, under a dripping rain, Norton I by the grace of God, Emperor of the United States…departed this life.”

San Francisco’s largest newspaper the Chronicle ran a headline which read simply: THE KING IS DEAD.

Joshua Abraham Norton, the self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States had arrived in America with over $40,000 in cash in his pockets, but after the Emperor died, when authorities went to search the tiny dingy room that he rented at a boarding house at 624 Commercial Street all they found was a single gold coin worth about two dollars and fifty cents and some loose change.

Over the course of his life Joshua Abraham Norton lost nearly all the money that he ever had, but in the process, by declaring himself the Emperor of the United States he brought an entire city together.