The Emperor Norton Trust

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.