The Legend Of Oofty Goofty
And
Other Tales
By
Russell W. Estlack
Copyright 2006 by Russell W. Estlack
Published by:
Russell W. Estlack
2398 East 200 South Street
St. George, Utah 84790
russellw@davidp.com
(435) 656-1125
Contents
The Legend of Oofty Goofty
She Was A Hell of a Good Woman
The Great Train Robbery of 1895
Norton I, First Emperor of the United States
Vigilante Justice
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned
The Red Ghost of Arizona
The Gentle Giant of Texas
Henry Starr, King of the Bank Robbers
The Lieutenant Was a Lady
The Grandest Storyteller of Them All
Bring Me the Head of Joaquin Murieta
Julia Bulette, Queen of the Comstock
The Man With Nine Lives
Sam Brown’s Folly
Queho’s Revenge
Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets
The Pluviculturist Was All Wet
The Legend of Oofty Goofty
In the late 1800’s, San Francisco was a wild and dangerous place, a mecca that lured immigrants from every corner of the globe to its golden shores. The city by the bay that started as a collection of mud huts, a military fort, and a few Spanish missions was now a bustling metropolis. Shops of every type, bars, brothels, and dance halls lined its crowded streets. Every few years, firestorms swept the city clean, and each time, the inhabitants built it bigger and better.
Since its humble beginnings, California has attracted some of the strangest characters in the history of the United States. One such individual was a man known only as Oofty Goofty, a name he acquired during his first public appearance as a wild man in a freak show on Market Street.
This strange looking man wandered aimlessly through the muddy streets of San Francisco in search of his destiny. No one knew from whence he came or where he was going, and no one seemed to care. Like most of the strange inhabitants of Kearny street, this nocturnal nomad known only as “Professor Ooofty Goofty joined the nightly parade of humanity. He loved the night, and he reveled in the glare of the bright lamps that shone from Pacific to Market Street.
Dressed in an ill-fitting black suit, an oversized top hat and boots that were too small for his feet, this scarecrow of a man stood out among his peers. One night, Oofty strayed up Market Street into the heart of the Barbary Coast, the most depraved section of the city.
He had never seen such wonderful sights in his life. He was fascinated by the loud music emanating from the saloons and dance halls, and the painted ladies who offered their services to any wayward gentleman who could afford them. He was drawn to the vicious street fights and the offers of lewd entertainment that permeated the entire district. After the serenity of his life on Market Street, the excitement of the Barbary Coast was just what he needed.
Each night, Oofty walked the streets in search of employment. He needed money and was willing to do almost anything short of murder or robbery to get it. While walking past a dark alley, a short, rotund conman in a red and white checkered suit and black derby ran out and grabbed him. The large diamond stick pin in his lapel and the numerous jeweled rings on his fingers were as phony as he was. The fast talking scallywag had little trouble convincing the gullible young man that he would be a roaring success and become rich beyond his greatest expectations as the one and only, the original “Wild Man of Borneo.”
Oofty believed everything his new friend told him. He followed the man to a small room in the back of a rundown saloon. Two large, gorilla-like toughs in turbans and robes ambled over to Oofty, undressed him, and pushed him down into a hard wooden chair. With great dexterity and a pair of shears, the Turks removed the luxuriant curly locks from his head. From the top of his head to the soles of his feet, they coated his naked body with hot tar and covered it with a layer of black horsehair. They painted his face with black dye to give him a savage and ferocious appearance that would frighten his own mother and give his audiences nightmares.
Once the transformation was complete, Oofty was installed in a large iron cage. He was an immediate success. People came from all over the territory to see the recently captured wild man from the jungles of Borneo. With the curious onlookers gathered around the cage, one of the Turks would tell them how they captured this primitive savage and how they spared no expense to bring him to San Francisco. He told them to step back and be ready to run for the exits if the beast broke free of his prison.
The Turk beat the cage with a club to rile up the wild man and threw enormous chunks of meat at him through the bars. As part of the act, the wild man tore the meat apart with his bare hands and gobbled it down. Red dye that resembled blood ran down his chin and dripped onto the floor of the cage. He gripped the bars and shook them violently to terrorize his audience while jumping up and down in frenzy. In a high-pitched voice that freighted his audience, he yelped out those fearsome words, “Oofty Goofty! Oofty Goofty!”
The wild man’s antics delighted the crowd. Each time he shook the bars and screamed at them, they moved closer to the exits. They didn’t know if he could get loose, but they weren’t taking any chances. Since the wild man didn’t have a name, someone in the audience christened him Oofty Goofty, a name he carried with him for the rest of his life.
For more than a week, Oofty was the biggest draw on the Pacific Coast. It was standing room only. The patrons felt it was worth every penny of their hard-earned money to see the legendary “Wild Man From Borneo.” Oofty was enjoying his newfound fame and fortune when he became ill. He couldn’t perspire through the thick covering of tar and horsehair and when he passed out, the Turks rushed him to the Receiving Hospital of San Francisco.
For several days, the physicians tried in vain to remove his costume without removing his Skin. They soaked him in every solvent they could find, but nothing seemed to work. They found a tar solvent at a local hardware store, placed him in a tub and doused his body with it. They laid him on the roof of the hospital in the hot sun. The tar melted three days later.
After his disastrous stint as the Wild Man From Borneo, Oofty refused to accept any more outlandish character roles. Instead, he decided to try his luck as a singer and dancer. The manager of Bottle Koenigs, a Barbary Coast beer hall that catered to the dregs of society, hired him. He was uncoordinated and fell off the stage to the laughter of his audience. His voice was so bad that as soon as he started to sing, the audience threw rotten tomatoes at him and told him to shut up. It was a good thing their aim was bad. Most of the missiles soared past him and splattered against the backdrop, but a few hit him dead center. In a voice that sounded like a cross between a sawmill and a jackhammer, he belted out a romantic Irish ballad.
The audience was in no mood to be trifled with. They’d worked hard all day and they wanted their entertainment. Oofty ignored their taunts and tomatoes and continued to sing. The crowd became violent and rushed the stage. Four drunken miners grabbed him, kicked him, punched him, and lifted him off his feet. They tossed him like a sack of flour to the waiting crowd. Oofty fought them every step of the way, but they were too strong for him. They carried him to the bat-wing doors at the front of the bar and tossed him onto the sidewalk. A few seconds later, his top hat flew through the air and landed near his supine body.
Oofty picked himself up, placed his hat on his head, and walked away from his latest debacle. He was amazed to discover that he was unhurt and felt no pain. He had been kicked and pummeled by dozens of angry drunks and he’d landed with great force on a stone sidewalk. There were no broken bones, no sprains, or any other injuries. Perhaps the treatment to remove his wild man costume made him insensitive to pain.
Oofty was always looking for ways to earn a living. He soon realized that the unfortunate incident in the saloon was in reality a fortunate event. He decided that since he as invulnerable, he would capitalize on his great gift or as Oofty called it, “his work.” For the next fifteen years, he eked out a precarious existence by allowing himself to be kicked and punched for a price. He advertised himself as a human plank, and boasted, “For a price, one can kick or hammer my carcass at will, but the glamour of gladness will hang round me still.”
Oofty traveled from town to town and played his unusual talent for all it was worth. In each town, he stationed himself in front a saloon looking for customers. Once he found a willing participant, Oofty invited him to kick him, or whack him with a cane or the baseball bat he always carried. For ten cents, a man might kick Oofty as hard as he pleased. For a quarter, he could hit him with a walking stick, and for fifty cents, he would become the willing recipient of a blow with the baseball bat.
Oofty’s peculiar vocation carried him through the towns and many painless whacks until one day he met the mighty John L. Sullivan. Oofty heard that the great pugilist was in town and went looking for him. He found the fighter in front of a local sporting house. He was amusing himself with a bottle of whiskey and few of the town’s soiled doves.
In a manner befitting his presumed status as a major attraction, Oofty explained his bizarre service to the boxer. Sullivan was always looking for diversions, and with unbounded enthusiasm, he accepted Oofty’s offer. The crowd smelled blood and bets were placed on the outcome.
Sullivan paid his fee, took off his coat, and rolled up his sleeves. He grasped a pool cue in his oversized hands and waited until Oofty’s back was turned. Like Babe Ruth hitting a four-bagger in the World Series, the pool cue connected with its target. Sullivan.dealt Oofty the whack of his life. Oofty flew through the air and landed in a prone position. He lay on the sidewalk moaning in agony as the he intense pain coursed through his tortured body. With his mighty bat, John L. Sullivan accomplished what no one else could do. He shattered two of Oofty’s vertebrae.
Oofty’s show business career had come to a painful end. He never recovered from his encounter with the great John L. Sullivan. He walked with a limp and whimpered at the slightest touch. To earn a living, he was forced to swamp out saloons and clean out stables. With his claim to fame gone, people soon forgot him. He died a pauper and was buried in an unmarked grave.
She Was A Hell Of A Good Woman
Sarah Bowman was a mountain of a woman. She stood 6’2’ and had a reputation as the roughest fighter on the Rio Grande. Because she was intrepid and reckless while at the same time possessing all of the finer qualities of her sex, and despite her great size, they nicknamed her “The Great Western” after the largest steamship afloat.
Sarah didn’t fit the stereotype of the frontier woman. Weighing two hundred pounds, she was described as having dark eyes, enormous breasts, an hourglass figure and long black, red, or blonde hair. She packed two pistols and she knew how to use them. People said she was so tall you had to hug her in installments.
Sarah was born in 1812 in Clay County Missouri. Not much is known of her early years. She married young and along about 1845, her husband joined the Army to fight the Seminoles. Not wanting to be deprived of his company, she signed on as a cook and laundress and followed him to Florida. When her husband took sick, she left him behind and moved on with General Zachary Taylor’s army to Fort Texas (later called Fort Brown) near the site of present day Brownsville, Texas.
Tensions ran high on both sides of the border in 1846. In early May, Taylor received word that thousands of Mexican troops were crossing the Rio Grande. Unless the general acted at once, the Mexicans would cut off his supply lines to Fort Texas and endanger the supply depot at Port Isabel on the Gulf of Mexico.
Determined to save the Army’s crucial supplies, Taylor marshaled most of his forces and marched them toward the coast. In the hope they could withstand an attack from the Mexican Army stationed across the river in Matamoros, the general left five hundred soldiers, one hundred women, and a dozen artillery pieces behind to defend the fort.
This was what the Mexicans were waiting for. With most of Taylor’s army gone, the laid siege to the fort. Once the cannonballs started to fly, the women were ordered to the dugouts for safety. Sarah refused to go. Exhibiting great courage under fire, Sarah began to care for the wounded and dying. She brought food to the women in the dugouts and tended to their needs. At one point, the fighting was so fierce that a piece of shrapnel tore through her sunbonnet and a stray bullet knocked a bread tray out of her hands.
The siege lasted for seven days until the Mexicans were driven off. For her bravery, the soldiers called her “The Heroine of Fort Brown.” Her legend grew when she offered to join a charge against a band of Mexican cavalry on the opposite bank of Arroyo Colorado Lagoon. In a loud voice she said “I’ll wade the river and whip the enemy single-handed if only someone will loan me a stout pair of tongs.” A few minutes later, she saved numerous soldiers from drowning when their flatboat sank.
President Polk used the siege of Fort Brown as an excuse to invade Mexico. Under direct orders from the United States Government, Taylor’s Army crossed the Rio Grande and marched into Northern Mexico. As a cook and laundress for the Army, Sarah went with them. In the town of Saltillo, near the city of Monterrey, she opened the American House, an establishment providing weary soldiers with food, drink, and women.
Surrounded by thousands of soldiers, Sarah had plenty of male companionship. Not knowing or even caring if the husband she left in Florida was alive or dead, she married for a second time. He was a member of the 5th Infantry and his name has been listed as Bourjette, Bourget, or Bourdette. He may have been killed in the attack on Monterrey, or then again, maybe he wasn’t.
At the Battle of Buena Vista, a few miles south of Saltillo, Sarah was once again in the thick of the fighting. With grape shot and musket balls flying in every direction, she moved along the front lines giving aid and comfort to the troops. She provided hot meals for them, nursed the wounded where they fell, and picked them up and carried them to safety.
Sarah could whip almost any man in a rough and tumble fight, but she also had a gentle side. During the hardest fighting, she learned that her good friend, Captain George Lincoln had been killed. It grieved her to think that he might lie where he fell and not receive a proper funeral. She walked the bloody battlefield until she found him. Wrapping him in a blanket, she carried his body back to Saltillo, and gave him a Christian burial.
Sarah ran her hotel until the end of the war. When the Army was ready to pull out, she mounted her horse and rode up to the commanding officer, Major Rucker. She asked to join a column of dragoons that had been ordered to California.
“Only married women can march with the Army,” he replied. “You’ll have to marry one of the dragoons.”
Sarah rode back and forth along the line of mounted horsemen looking for a suitable candidate. In a thunderous voice that shook the parade ground she cried out, “Who wants a wife with fifteen thousand dollars and the biggest leg in Mexico?”
The thought that Sarah might have a husband or two somewhere may have caused the men to hesitate. At first, no one wanted to take her up on her offer. After a long silence, a dragoon named David E. Davis stepped forward. “I have no objection to making you my wife if there’s a clergyman to tie the knot.”
Sarah turned to the soldier and with a hearty laugh she said, “Bring your blankets to my tent tonight and I’ll learn you to tie a knot that will satisfy you, I reckon.”
Sarah changed husbands as often as most women changed their shoes and her marriages didn’t last long. She fell in love with a man her own size and before long Davis was just a memory. Although she acquired several husbands along the way, there is no record of any divorce.
Sometime in 1849, Sarah arrived in El Paso, Texas. She opened a hotel that catered to the forty-niners and newly arrived soldiers at the fort. She was El Paso’s first madam and provided her guest with rooms, meals, and female companionship.
Sarah found her next husband among the troops at Fort Bliss. Albert Bowman, a man fifteen years her junior was her last husband. When her husband transferred to Socorro, New Mexico, she leased her hotel to the Army and went with him. The couple stayed in New Mexico for two years and after Albert was discharged, they moved on to Arizona City, across the Colorado River from Fort Yuma.
The couple became the town’s first permanent residents. While Albert worked as an upholsterer, Sarah opened a restaurant and boarding house in a dirt-roofed adobe building on the edge of town. By 1864, Sarah and Albert were no longer together. He had taken another wife, and they were expecting their first child.
Sarah died from a venomous spider bite on December 22, 1866. She was buried with full military honors at the post cemetery at Fort Yuma, the only woman permitted to lie among her beloved soldiers. In August of 1890, the Quartermaster’s Department of the United States Army exhumed the one hundred and fifty nine bodies including Sarah’s remains from the cemetery. They were reburied in the National Cemetery at the presidio in San Francisco.
Despite the fact that Sarah Bowman was everything a frontier woman wasn’t expected to be, she will be remembered for her courage under fire and her love and compassion for her fellow soldiers. To quote an old cowboy who met “the Great Western” in an Arizona mining town, “She was a hell of a good woman.”
The Great Train Robbery of 1895
Near the small town of Wilcox, Arizona, a valuable treasure of Mexican silver pesos lies scattered in the sand, the result of one of the zaniest train robberies in the history of Arizona.
Times were tough in the Arizona territory in 1895. Jobs and money were hard to come by. Most of the cowhands were broke or unemployed. Grant Wheeler and Joe George were no exception. Leaning against the hitching rail in front of a saloon, they decided to do something to change their situation. Since the Southern Pacific Railroad had plenty of money, they would rob the westbound train.
Grant and Joe had never robbed a train before. How difficult could it be to stop a slow-moving train, break into the express car, and make off with the contents of the safe? If all those other guys could get away with it, why couldn’t they?
Posing as prospectors, the two men purchased a large supply of blasting caps and a case of dynamite. They stashed the explosives a few miles west of town, tied their horses to a nearby tree, and walked two mile along the track until they came to a steep grade. As the train approached, it slowed down long enough for Grant and Joe to jump aboard.
Grant held the engineer and fireman at gunpoint and ordered him to stop the train Joe jumped down from the cab and uncoupled the passenger cars. On a signal from the outlaws, the engineer moved the engine, express and baggage cars forward to the spot where the dynamite was hidden. The outlaws broke into the express car expecting to find the guard waiting for them with a loaded shotgun. To their surprise, the car was empty. The guard had jumped out the door of the express car and disappeared down the tracks.
In the center of the car, the bandits found a large Wells Fargo safe and dozens of sacks of “dobe dollars” (silver pesos) piled against a wall. Believing that a few well-placed sticks of dynamite would do the job, they lit the fuses and ducked for cover. The blast made a lot of noise, but the safe remained intact.
Undaunted by their failure to open the safe, they packed the dynamite against the door and added a few extra sticks just to be sure. The resulting explosion blew out the doors and windows of the express car, but it only stretched the paint on the safe and scattered a few silver pesos across the car’s interior.
The frustrated desperados weren’t quite ready to give up yet. They packed their remaining explosives against the safe, covered them with eight large sacks of “dobe dollars” to hold the dynamite in place, lit the fuse and ran for cover. The blast shook the ground like a California earthquake and turned the express car into kindling. Large pieces of wood flew through the air in every direction followed by thousands of silver pesos.
Perhaps it was just dumb luck that Grant and Joe weren’t hurt or killed by the flying silver. The airborne coins filled the air like shrapnel from an artillery barrage, sowing the desert with bent and twisted pesos. They embedded themselves in everything they hit including the telegraph poles and cacti along the tracks.
Once the smoke cleared, the robbers returned to the remains of the express car. The explosion tore the door of the safe off its hinges and blew it several feet away. Except for a few American dollars, the safe was empty. The only things on the train worth taking were the silver pesos and they were scattered all over the landscape.
Disappointed with their take, the outlaws picked up a few coins and rode off into the desert. When news of the fiasco reached Wilcox, the good citizens of the town grabbed their rakes and rushed to the crime scene. The silver-laden telegraph poles and the bent and twisted coins became valuable souvenirs. Many years after the robbery, people were still uncovering silver coins.
Grant and Joe must have believed the old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” On February 26, they stopped another Southern Pacific train near Stein’s Pass in southwestern New Mexico. As luck would have it, the engineer and fireman were the same ones they’d held up in their previous robbery.
Grant kept them covered while Joe uncoupled the cars. They ordered the engineer to move the train the train two miles up the track to the place they stashed the dynamite. With the trainmen in front of them, they walked back to the express car. To their dismay, it wasn’t there. Joe had uncoupled the wrong car. The express car was two miles down the track still coupled to the passenger cars. The robbers released their captives and when the train was out of sight, they lit the fuse on the unused dynamite. Without looking back, they rode away.
Wells Fargo and the Southern Pacific didn’t take too kindly to having their property treated in such a cavalier manner. W.M. Breakenridge, the agent in charge of the Southern Pacific in southern Arizona was directed to organize a posse and capture the outlaws. He caught up with Grant near Mancos, Colorado on April 25th. Rather than allowing himself to be taken alive, he committed suicide.
As for Joe, it isn’t certain what became of him. According to Marshall Trimble. The official Arizona state historian, he was eventually tracked down and killed. Fred Moore, who settled in southern Arizona in 1875, told a different story. As a young man, he had befriended the outlaws and knew them quite well. In an interview with Helen Smith of Cochise County, Fred stated, “Joe was tracked down, arrested, and sent to the territorial prison in Yuma. I ran into him in a restaurant in Cochise many years later. He was dressed in fine clothes, a diamond stickpin in his cravat, and a large ring on his finger. He looked like a highly successful gambler.”
He started a conversation with me,” Fred continued, “and he seemed vaguely familiar. I tumbled to his identity when I noticed that his trigger finger was missing. Joe’s trigger finger had been shot away. As to what became of him, I have no idea, nor have I heard more about him. An instinctive distrust made me hurry to the caboose and keep out of sight until I knew he was not aboard the train.”
But for the lure of easy money, we might never have heard of Grant Wheeler and Joe George. Unlike the James Brothers who made a serious living robbing trains, the antics of Grant and Joe gave everyone a good laugh. They weren’t the most successful train robbers in the history of Arizona, but the may have been the funniest.
Norton I,
First Emperor Of The United States
On July 4, 1776, representatives from thirteen colonies met in Philadelphia to declare their independence from the yoke of tyranny. Since that historic day, forty-three men have held the title of President of The United States. But in 1859, America had another head of state, a self-proclaimed emperor who ruled by proclamation.
Unlike all of our presidents, Joshua Abraham Norton was not a natural born citizen of the United States. The second of nine children, Joshua was born to John and Sarah Norton on February 14, 1819 at Shropshire, England. In response to a call for immigrants to populate the new settlements in South Africa, the Norton family took advantage of free land in a new country. Along with other Jewish families, they settled on Algoa Bay near the Cape of Good Hope.
The Cape was a major port of call for ships of many nations and John became wealthy by providing them with provisions and needed services. As a young man, Joshua worked in his father’s chandlery, but the job didn’t last long. In 1848, John, Sarah and two brothers became ill and died. Joshua inherited the bulk of his father’s estate that amounted to about forty thousand dollars.
Joshua was 30 years old, wealthy, and restless. When news of a major gold strike in California reached South Africa, Joshua saw it as an opportunity to increase his fortune. He booked passage on the Dutch schooner Franzika, and in 1849, he landed in San Francisco.
Joshua was different from the majority of forty-niners. While most of them headed for the gold fields of the Sierra Nevada, he set himself up in the import brokerage business. He rented a small adobe cottage and hung a large sign over the door advertising his business, Joshua Norton & Company, General Merchants. To store his merchandise, he purchased one of the hundreds of derelict ships that littered the harbor. They were abandoned when their crews jumped ship and joined the rush to the gold fields.
Selling supplies to miners and prospectors was much more profitable than searching for gold. Joshua’s customers were more than willing to pay the exorbitant prices he charged and he was more than willing to take their money. In 1851, the cottage burned to the ground and Joshua moved his operations into a granite building in a fashionable section of the city. With so much money coming into the company coffers, he decided to diversify and expand his empire.
The San Francisco real estate market was booming. Land was scarce and only the wealthy could afford to by it. Through shrewd business dealings, Joshua acquired three parcels of land on a busy street. He opened a cigar factory, a small wooden office building, and a rice mill. The lots he purchased along the bay increased in value when The Pacific Mail Steamship Company built a passenger terminal and warehouse nearby. He also purchased several lots in North Beach, an undeveloped section of the city.
Joshua’s wealth continued to grow, and by 1853, his assets were estimated at $250,000. He was considered one of the most respected and successful businessmen in San Francisco. Always on the lookout for new opportunities, he attempted to corner the rice market. The Chinese were the largest ethnic group in the city and the main ingredient in their diet was rice. Most of the rice came by ship from China, but a disastrous famine in the Orient cut of their supplies. With rice in short supply, the price rose from four cents a pound to thirty-six cents a pound.
A banker at the Merchant’s Exchange of San Francisco showed Joshua a handful of rice from Peru and told him there were two hundred thousand pounds in the holds of the Glyde, a ship anchored in the harbor. Joshua could buy it for twelve cents a pound or $25,000 for the entire cargo. He could resell it at thirty-six cents and make a handsome profit.
Joshua put two thousand dollars down and agreed to pay the balance in thirty days. Before he could take advantage of the inflated prices, a ship loaded to the gunwales with Peruvian rice sailed into the harbor. In the next few days other ships followed. The price dropped to three cents a pound. Joshua tried to nullify the contract on the grounds that he had been misled. He argued that the rice on the Glyde was inferior to the sample the banker had shown him. When Joshua refused to pay, the owner of the Glyde sued.
Over the next three years, Joshua’s life was a nightmare. One of his clients accused him of embezzlement. The Lucas Turner and Company Bank foreclosed on his North Beach properties. His holdings became worthless and he filed for bankruptcy. On August 25, 1856, a brief notice appeared in the newspapers, “Joshua Norton, filed a petition for the benefit of the Insolvency Law. Liabilities $55,811; assets stated at $15,000, uncertain value. During the years of litigation that followed, Joshua lost it all.
With his life in ruins, Joshua disappeared. When he emerged from his self-imposed exile, it was apparent to everyone that in addition to losing his fortune, he had also lost his sanity. On the morning of September 17, 1859, he donned an admiral’s uniform, complete with gold braid, gilt epaulets, and shiny brass buttons. He climbed the stairs, strode into the office of the editor of the San Francisco Bulletin and placed an official looking proclamation on his desk.
The editor had a rich sense of humor and decided to publish the proclamation on the front page of the morning edition. Printed under the headline “Have We An Emperor Among Us?” the proclamation read as follows,
“At the pre-emptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I Joshua Norton, formally of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last nine years and ten months past of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself the Emperor of These United States, and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall of this city, on the first day of February next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.”
Norton I
Emperor of the United States
September 17th 1859
The citizenry had a good laugh and decided it was a great idea. By unanimous acclamation, they accepted Norton as their emperor. They humored his delusions and seemed proud that Norton chose their city as his royal capitol. He strolled along the streets as if he did rule the city. They gave him a wave or a bow as they passed him on the streets and they addressed him as “Your Majesty.”
Norton played his role to the hilt. He looked and acted like a king even if his royal uniform was ill fitting and a little worse for wear. With a ceremonial sword at his side, an umbrella as his scepter, the bearded monarch inspected his domain. He topped off his attire with a beaver hat decorated with colored peacock feathers. Norton was short and stocky and the hat added inches to his stature making him seem taller than he really was.
Few monarchs in history ever had Norton’s common touch. He related to the people, and they loved him. During his daily patrols, the emperor made certain the sidewalks were unobstructed and the police were on duty. He checked on the progress of street repairs, inspected buildings that were under construction, and called on city hall to enforce all of the city’s ordinances. Whenever Norton felt that taxes were too high, he ordered the city to lower them. If public facilities were inadequate, he ordered them fixed.
When Norton noticed someone performing an act of kindness, he made them part of royal entourage. He would place a hand on their shoulder and ennoble them with the title of “King or Queen for a day.” To be a Duke, Lord, or Earl in Norton’s court was high praise indeed. Gangs of children followed him everywhere he went. They picked up litter and helped old ladies across the street in the hope of being named a “Prince of the realm”
The citizens of San Francisco were proud to adopt this eccentric ex-merchant as their own, and they afforded him the royal treatment he commanded. He enjoyed free meals in the city’s finest restaurants as the guest of the owners. The proprietors vied for his royal patronage, and placed brass plaques in the entrance that declared, “By Appointment to his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I of the United States.”
Associating the emperor with a restaurant, clothing store, or saloon generated free publicity for the merchants and guaranteed a substantial increase in their profits. Business owners soon learned that any time Norton was involved, the newspapers were happy to give them free publicity. One business advertised, “Gentlemen’s Outfitters to his Imperial Majesty.” A popular tavern posted a sign in its window that read, “Fine wines and spirituous liquors by Appointments to his Majesty, Norton I. He became angry with some of the merchants who used his name without his permission. He threatened to take action, but never did.
When the troops of Napoleon III invaded Mexico in 1862, Norton added a new title, Protector of Mexico.” “Mexico,” he said, ”beseeched him to expel the foreign invaders and rule over them. He soon dropped the title with the explanation that it was “impossible to protect such an unsettled nation.”
Norton printed his own money. Since U.S. currency was considered unreliable, his dollars were accepted almost anywhere without question. If he owed debts or was in a financial bind, he paid with his imperial “legal tender” in denominations ranging from fifty cents to ten dollars. His picture and the denomination were imprinted on the front of each bill with a promise to pay to the holder hereof with interest at 7 per cent per annum from date; the principal and interest to be convertible, at the option of the holder, at maturity, into 20 years 7 percent. Bonds are payable in Gold Coin.
One day, Norton walked into the lobby of the First National Bank of San Francisco. He attempted to cash one hundred dollars of imperial currency, but the bank refused to honor his request. He then issued a proclamation that foreclosed on the bank.
Norton also levied taxes on his subjects. He would often walk into an office building and announce an imperial assessment of ten million dollars. The owner would satisfy him a cigar with which he walked out of the building with.
The emperor rode free on all of the city’s ferries and streetcars. Leland Stanford, the president of the Central Pacific Railroad gave Norton a fee lifetime pass that he used to attend sessions of the state legislature and review military troops around the Bay area. The city gave him a bicycle for his royal transport and thirty dollars a year to pay for his uniforms. The local Masonic lodge took care of his rent.
Norton never traveled alone when he made his daily rounds. He was accompanied by Bummer and Lazarus, two stray dogs with an uncanny ability to keep the city’s rat population in check. The dogs had been together ever since Bummer saved Lazarus from being killed by a larger dog. They were often seen at the free lunch counters in the city’s saloons waiting for Norton or other patrons to toss them a few choice morsels. No play or musical performance would dare open its doors to the public without reserving seats for Norton and his two companions.
Bummer and Lazarus became as popular as the emperor. Newspapers competed with each other to report their escapades. One day a new dogcatcher mistakenly took Lazarus into custody. An angry mob surrounded city hall and demanded that Lazarus be turned loose. The city council met in an emergency session and announced that both dogs were to have free run of the city.
In October 1863, Lazarus was run over by a San Francisco fire truck and the city entered into a period of morning. Thousands of tearful citizens turned out for his funeral and Norton received hundreds of letter of condolences. The Daily Evening Bulletin ran a lengthy obituary “Lament for Lazarus.” Two years later, Bummer died a painful and lingering death. He was kicked by a drunk when he entered his favorite saloon for a free lunch. Mark Twain, a well-known reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, wrote Bummer’s obituary. “Bummer died “full of years, and honor, and disease, and fleas.” The Bulletin described Lazarus and Bummer as “Two dogs with but a single bark, two tails that wagged as one.”
Any politician who failed to show proper respect for the emperor had to face the wrath of his constituents. In 1867, constable Armand Barbier arrested his Imperial Majesty on a charge of vagrancy. His fellow officers pointed out that since the emperor had $4.75 in his pocket and lived in a lodging house, he wasn’t a vagrant. Barbier declared that Norton was of unsound mind and a danger to himself and others. He wanted to commit him to a psychiatric hospital. Norton was placed in a cell to await a mental examination by the Commissioner of Lunacy “ for involuntary treatment of a mental disorder.”
The public was outraged. Every newspaper in the city printed scathing editorials denouncing the police department. Fearing a riot, Police Chief Patrick Crowley opened the door to Norton’s cell and ordered his release. He issued a formal apology to his Majesty on behalf of the police force. Norton accepted with magnanimity and pardoned Officer Barbier for his act of treason. From that day forth, every member of Norton’s “Imperial Constabulary” saluted him each time he passed them on the street. A special chair was reserved for the emperor at each precinct. He marched at the head of the annual police parade and reviewed the cadets at the University of California.
Norton may have been a mad man, but he refused to accept racial intolerance. A number of anti-Chinese demonstrations had broken out against the residents of some of the poorer sections of the city and many of them died in the riots that followed. One night, a gang of vigilantes marched into San Francisco’s China town. The only thing that blocked them from reaching their intended target was the solitary figure of Emperor Norton standing in the middle of the street.
Norton could have reasoned with them or he could have ordered them to cease and desist in the name of His Royal Imperial authority, but he knew they wouldn’t listen. This situation called for stronger measures and Norton was up to the task. He removed his hat, bowed his head, and repeated the Lord’s Prayer several times. Within a few minutes, the agitators retreated in shame.
Norton ruled his kingdom by proclamation and he enjoyed the powers and privileges befitting an emperor. While he spent most of his time inspecting his domain, he never neglected his paper work. During his reign, he drafted a wide variety of royal edicts and proclamations. As loyal subjects, the newspaper editors followed his commands and printed them.
Norton believed that the United States was now a monarchy and there was no longer a need for a federal legislative body. On October 12, 1859, he issued a decree that dissolved the United States Congress and ordered “all interested parties” to gather at Platt’s Music Hall in San Francisco on February 1, 1860. On the date of the scheduled meeting, the Bulletin urged folks to get there early for a good seat. When the Emperor arrived at the hall, the doors were locked and not a soul had shown up. Since Congress had failed to comply, he ordered Commander of the Army, General Winfield Scott to assemble his forces, march on Washington, and “clear the halls.’ General Scott didn’t comply either.
Each week, Norton issued a new decree. He abolished the California Supreme Court and fired Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia for hanging abolitionist John Brown. He replaced him with Governor John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky. In 1869, he abolished both the Republican and Democratic parties, and in 1872, he issued the following edict:
“Whoever after due and proper warning, shall be heard to utter the abominable word “Frisco” which has no linguistic or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of a High Misdemeanor, and shall pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of twenty-five dollars.”
Bay Area newspapers competed for the honor of publishing his proclamations. On more than one occasion, they published fake decrees to generate sales. Some of the local citizens submitted their own bogus proclamations to the newspapers when they wanted to express a political view or make fun of the emperor. Anything that made a good story sold papers and Norton was grist for the tabloids.
There was genius in Norton’s madness and he may have been a man before his time. He ordered a suspension bridge to be built from Oakland to Goat Island to Telegraph Hill provided it could be built without injury to the navigable waters of San Francisco Bay. He further ordered that the Central Pacific Railroad Company be granted franchises to lay down tracks and run cars from Telegraph Hill, along the city front to Mission Bay. The idea of building a bridge across the Bay may have been a ridiculous idea in 1872, but sixty-four years later, it became a reality.
Norton was convinced that travel by air would one day be a common mode of transportation. He commissioned panels of researchers and designers to create plans for airships and commanded his loyal subjects to provide the financial means to guarantee the success of the venture.
His Imperial Majesty proposed a worldwide League of Nations that would meet on a regular basis to resolve international problems through diplomacy. He wrote to many of the Heads of State around the world including Abraham Lincoln, King Kamehameha of Hawaii and Queen Victoria of England. They all replied to his letters. King Kamehameha was so impressed with Norton that he refused to recognize the U. S. State Department, saying he would only deal with representatives of the empire.
In the 1870’s, San Francisco had become a major tourist destination and Norton was one of the main attractions. Visitors to the city had read about the Emperor in travel books and newspapers and they wanted to meet him. Golden Gate Park and the Botanical Gardens, the zoo, the seals, and the sea lions were okay, but they wanted to see his Imperial Majesty. Almost every store, hotel, and saloon displayed a sign that read “By Appointment to Norton I.” The most popular items were picture postcards of the Emperor, Emperor Norton dolls dressed in a military uniform and a plumed hat, Emperor Norton Cigars with his portrait on the label, and colored lithographs suitable for framing.
The glorious reign of Norton I came to an abrupt end on a cold and rainy evening. On January 8, 1880, he was walking up California Street toward Nob Hill to attend the monthly debate of the Hastings Society at the Academy of Natural Science. As he passed Old St. Mary’s Church, he had an attack of apoplexy and collapsed. A passerby noticed him fall and raised the alarm. According to one newspaper, “the police officer on the beat hastened for a carriage to convey him to the City Receiving Hospital.” The Emperor passed away before the carriage arrived. As a large crowd gathered in front of the church, the police lifted Norton’s body into the carriage and took it to the city morgue.
In the pockets of the Emperor’s uniform they found several telegrams, a gold piece worth $2.50, $3.00 in silver, a French Franc dated 1828, and a bundle of fifty-cent Imperial Treasury notes. A horde of reporters invaded his tiny apartment in search of a final story. They discovered that all he left behind were his collection of walking sticks, his tasseled saber, numerous news clippings, his correspondence with Queen Victoria and President Lincoln, and 1,098,235 shares of stock in a worthless gold mine.
The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle published his obituary under the headline “Le Roi est Mort.” “On the reeking pavement, in the darkness of a moonless night under the dripping rain, Norton I, by the grace of God, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, departed this life.” The entire city mourned the loss of their beloved Emperor. One newspaper announced, “San Francisco without Emperor Norton will be like a throne without a king.” Out of respect for their friend, flags flew at half-staff and businesses closed their doors.
Despite the rumors that Norton had amassed a fortune during his twenty-year reign, it soon became quite evident that he died in poverty. The initial funeral plans called for him to be buried in a pauper’s coffin of simple redwood. To the members of a San Francisco businessmen’s association, The Pacific Club, these arrangements were unacceptable. The raised enough money to purchase a handsome rosewood casket and pay for a funeral fit for an Emperor at the Masonic Cemetery.
Ten thousand people came to the morgue to see their Emperor lying in state. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that “The visitors included all classes from the capitalist to the pauper, the clergyman and the pickpocket, the well dressed ladies, the bowed with age, and the prattling child.”
The funeral procession that followed the coffin from the morgue to the cemetery was more than two miles long and was headed by the city’s top officials. At 2:39 PM on January 10, 1880, as the coffin was lowered into the grave, San Francisco experienced a total eclipse. The mourners took it as a sign of Norton’s passing into the afterlife.
In 1934, the city of San Francisco closed its cemeteries to make way for office space and new housing. Norton’s remains were moved to Woodlawn Cemetery in Colma, California. Flags were once again lowered to half-staff and businesses closed their doors in his honor. Sixty thousand people looked on as he was re-interred with full military honors. The 3rd Battalion of the 159th Infantry Division fired three volleys into the air in salute while a lone bugler played taps. Carved into the new granite tombstone that covered his final resting were the words “Norton I, Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico, Joshua A. Norton, 1819-1890.”
Vigilante Justice
Few characters in the Old West have fired our imaginations like the gunfighters who rode the western trails. Their legends have been told and retold for generations and people never seem to tire of them. Movies, television, and popular fiction have presented these men as romantic heroes, but in reality many of them were vicious killers. One such hombre was a hard-living gunslinger named Joseph A. “Jack” Slade. Slade’s story is a tale of mayhem and murder on the high plains of Colorado.
Jack Slade was born to wealth and influence in Carlyle, Illinois, in 1829. As a young boy he had an uncontrollable temper and at an early age he displayed his murderous tendencies. By the time he reached the tender age of thirteen, he had killed his first man. The man was annoying Jack and his school friends and he felt justified in killing him. He picked up a rock, threw it at the man and hit him in the head. To avoid prosecution, his parents hustled him off to Texas.
In 1847, Jack enlisted in the Army and went off to fight the Mexicans. When the war ended, he took a job driving freight wagons over the Oregon Trail and later hired on as a stagecoach guard. Once, while riding shotgun over a particularly dangerous stretch of road, his coach was attacked by four mounted Indians. Jack killed three of them and took the forth one prisoner. He sliced off the ears of the dead men and gave them to the surviving Indian along with a warning to his chief not to attack any more stagecoaches. As Jack’s prowess with a gun grew, the need for his services increased.
In the late 1850’s, the settlement of Julesburg in northeastern Colorado was home to a way station for the Overland Stage Company and a trading post that was established a decade earlier by a French trader named Jules Beni, the reputed leader of a band of cutthroats. . The company hired Jules to serve as superintendent of the Overland Sweetwater Division, but they soon realized their mistake. The Sweetwater Division stretched for two hundred miles over some of the most dangerous territory in the West and the stations along the line of travel were prime targets for the gangs of outlaws who infested the territory.
Jules was a vile character with a reputation to match. The horses he swapped to the travelers crossing the plains somehow found their way back to corrals. The supplies he sold were robbed from the buyers and returned to the trading post to be sold again. Haystacks that were meant to provide feed for the teams of horses that pulled the stagecoaches mysteriously caught fire on a regular basis. Jules bought replacement hay at exorbitant prices and split the profits with his friends. Over time, reports of Jules’s nefarious activities filtered back to the company offices. Ben Ficklin, the general superintendent for the Overland made a surprise visit to the station to verify the reports. Discovering they were true he fired Jules on the spot. The man hired to replace him was Joseph Albert Slade.
Being fired didn’t set too well with Jules. He was angry and threatened to get even with Jack. Each time Jack attempted to upgrade the stage stations under his control, Jules interfered. On one occasion, Jack went to Jules’s ranch to recover some horses that belonged to the Overland Stage Company. As Jack led the horses out of the corral, Jules swore vengeance on him. Over the next few months, Jules continued to create problems for the new superintendent.
On a quiet spring morning in 1859, Jack rode onto the grounds of the Julesburg station. He was unarmed and not expecting trouble. Jules and a few hired hands were engaged in conversation near the corral. When Jules saw his nemesis heading for the bunkhouse, he pulled out a pistol and pumped six slugs into his body. Jack managed to stay on his feet long enough to stagger around the corner of the ranch house. Seeing that Jack was still alive, he grabbed a loaded, double-barreled shotgun and took off after him. He caught up with his quarry and at point-blank range emptied both barrels into him.
Jules stood over the bleeding body of his enemy and examined his handiwork. “There’s an empty dry-goods crate in the barn” he said. “When he’s dead, you can put him in it and bury him.” He turned and walked away.
Legend has it and witnesses swear its true. The wounded man pushed himself up on his feet and confronted Jules. “You needn’t trouble yourself about my burial. I don’t intend to die. I’ll live long enough to wear one of your ears on my watch-guard.”
One of the ranch hands lifted Jack onto his horse, tied him to the saddle and took him back to Julesburg. The doctor worked on his shattered body for hours removing bullets and buckshot. Jack refused to die. As soon as he was strong enough to travel, he took a stagecoach back to the family home in Illinois to complete his recovery.
While Jack was being doctored, the hired hands decided invite Jules to a necktie party. They tossed a rope over a large beam between two freight wagons, dropped a noose around his neck, and strung him up. Someone must have been watching over Jules. At that exact moment, Ben Ficklin rode into the station and cut him down. Upon hearing the details of the shooting, Ficklin ordered Jules to clear out of the territory forever or face vigilante justice. Realizing that if he stayed, he’d end his days swinging at the end of a rope. He climbed on his horse and disappeared.
Jules moved his operations west to the Rocky Ridge Division near the Wyoming border. His outlaw gang was creating the same kind of trouble they had inflicted on the Sweetwater Division. The Overland Stage Company needed their most feared enforcer and Jack was not about to pass up his chance to exact revenge.
Jack returned to Colorado and took over as superintendent of the Rocky Ridge Division. The records aren’t clear, but somewhere along the way he married an alleged prostitute named Virginia Dale. She weighed in 160 pounds and was described as tall and voluptuous She was a rather nasty character and was forever interfering in her husband’s business. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that she was the cause of most of their problems.
. By all accounts she was an expert horsewoman and almost as good with a gun as her husband. When a gang of outlaws captured her husband, he asked to be allowed to say goodbye to his wife before they killed him. The outlaws brought Virginia to the cabin where they were holding her husband. They should have searched her. She had several pistols hidden under her skirt and as soon as she walked through the door she started firing. Jack grabbed one of the guns and joined the fray. After the smoke cleared, the gun-toting young couple walked out unhurt, leaving the dead outlaws in their wake.
Jules and his band of cutthroats continued to terrorize the countryside. Jack was determined to put a stop to his activities once and for all. He recruited a posse and caught up with him driving a herd of stolen horses toward Julesburg. His men opened fire on the rustlers and Jules was wounded. Jack ordered him tied to a post at the Virginia Dale Stage stop, a station he had built and named for his wife.
Jules had plenty of time to reflect on his fate. Throughout the night, he remained tied to the post. In the morning, Jack emerged from the bunkhouse and walked over to his captive. He raised his pistol, took careful aim, and fired. The bullet struck Jules in the arm. Leaving the wounded man hanging from the post, Jack turned and walked back into the station to eat his breakfast. When he finished his meal, he walked outside and shot Jules again. Perhaps it was Jack’s need for vengeance or the whiskey he consumed that he continued to use his enemy for target practice. Late in the afternoon, he put an end to it with a fatal shot to the head. He pulled his knife and carved off Jules’s ears as souvenirs. He attached them to his watch chain and carried them for the rest of his life.
Through he was exonerated, Jack was becoming a major problem for the Overland Stage Company. He was blamed for hangings, shootings, beatings and assaults. In a drunken rage, he smashed up the sutler’s store at Fort Halleck, shooting canned goods off the grocery shelves. Now that the lawless element that had preyed on the stagecoaches was gone, his services were no longer needed. The Overland Stage Company terminated his employment.
With his job gone, Jack and Virginia pulled up stakes and moved on to Virginia City in the Montana Territory. He bought a small ranch a few miles out of town and hired on as a supervisor of a toll road. He was responsible for collecting tolls, maintaining the road, and keeping travelers safe from outlaws.
As was to be expected, Jack spent his time drinking and gambling, fighting and carousing while Virginia did most of the work. Whenever he went on a bender, Jack and his friends galloped their horse up and down the streets. Yelling like wild Indians, they shot out windows and street lamps. They rode their horses into stores and saloons and destroyed them from within. It wasn’t long before Jack wore out his welcome.