DC 
 131 
 
 V/(^5 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DC 137.3.W65 
 
 Eleazer Williams not the dauphin of Fran 
 
 3 1924 024 291 274 
 
 ELEAZER WILLIAMS 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 read before the 
 
 Chicago Historical Society 
 
 december 4, 1902 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024291274 
 
,;1 
 
 ELEAZER WILLIAMS 
 
Form 1 photo taken jiist before his death 
 
 f3^ ^P^McU-y^^t^ 
 
ELEAZER WILLIAMS 
 
 NOT THE DAUPHIN OF FRANCE 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 read before the 
 
 Chicago Historical Society 
 
 december 4, 1902 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM WARD WIGHT 
 
 MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN 
 
 Published by Chicago Historical Society 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 FERGUS PRINTING COMPANY 
 1903 
 
 MT 
 
Da 
 
 '3 
 
 Copyright, 1903. 
 
ELEAZER WILLIAMS 
 
 NOT THE DAUPHIN OF FRANCE 
 
 ««««« 
 
 N October 13, 1841, the Prince de Joinville, with his 
 suite, took passage at Buffalo, New York, on the side- 
 wheel steamer Columbus, Captain John Shook. This 
 prince, younger son of Louis Philippe, king of the French, 
 was following the example set by his father, when in 
 exile, two score years before, and was seeking the western wilder- 
 ness. When, on October 18, 1841, the Columbus had ploughed 
 her watery furrow to Mackinac, a clerical looking gentleman, 
 appearing about fifty years of age, awaited at the wharf, the tjring 
 up of the vessel. The name this gentleman carried was Eleazer 
 Williams and his purpose was to board the steamer and to com- 
 panion with the princely party on its further voyage to Green 
 Bay. Wide newspaper advertisement of the prince's itinerary 
 had permitted Williams thus to anticipate Joinville's movements, 
 while the latter, who had been seeking for a person skilled in 
 Indianology and acquainted with the Northwest and had learned 
 of Williams in these connections, was eager for the introduction 
 to him which the captain of the vessel accomplished. 
 
 The next afternoon at three o'clock, the afternoon of October 
 19, anchorage was made at Green Bay. Williams is our main 
 authority for what conversation took place during the ride, and he 
 is our sole authority for what he relates to have occurred at a pri- 
 vate, appointed interview between the prince and himself during 
 the evening of the nineteenth at the Astor House in Green Bay. 
 More than eleven years after, on December 7, 1852, Williams, 
 while in New York, disclosed orally to a friend, Eev. J. H. Han- 
 son, what he declared were the details of this interview and he 
 fortified the disclosures by the production of what he claimed to 
 be a contemporary diary reciting the same details » 
 
2 Elbazee Williams 
 
 This paper must much condense Williams' narrative, -which is 
 printed at length in Hanson's "Have We a Bourbon Among Us"!"* 
 and "The Lost Prince." tAs the climax to much preli m inary mat- 
 ter, Joinville hailed Williams as the son of Louis XYI of France 
 and Marie Antoinette of Austria, his wife. The prince explained 
 that he, Eleazer, had been rescued from the Temple tower after 
 the king's execution, but he failed to disclose the time, the agencies 
 or the method of this evasion. He, Eleazer, had been brought to 
 America when about ten years of age, and placed in the wilds of 
 Canada in the home of Thomas Williams, far from the revolutionary 
 influences that would destroy him. The Prince de Joinville's own 
 object in coming to America now was to seek him out. Williams 
 relates to us how gTeat was his astonishment at this revelation, 
 how incredulous he was at first, and how certain the prince was 
 of his identity. Thereupon, the prince produced from his trunk, 
 a parchment, garnished with the governmental seal of France, 
 used under the old monarchy, and placed the document before the 
 new-found king of France and Navarre and requested his signar 
 ture. Williams studied it. It was very handsomely written in 
 French and English in parallel columns and proved to be a solemn 
 abdication of the crown of France in favor of Louis Philippe. The 
 pay for this abdication was to be a princely establishment in 
 France or in America, besides the restoration, either in kind or in 
 money equivalent, of all the private property which the Revolution 
 had confiscated. 
 
 Williams read and considered the parchment four or five hours, 
 his reflections gradually yielding to great anger. The sight of this 
 seal in the hands of an Orleanist, the thought that Louis Philippe 
 sat upon the throne from which he had been so ignominiously 
 excluded, the refloction that there stood before him the grandson of 
 that Egalit^ who had voted for the death of Louis XVI kindled 
 in every fibre of his being, Bourbonic wrath ! He, the scion of 
 the elder branch, the legitimate heir of Fraiice, scorned to barter 
 his honor and his birthright for gold. We quote: "The prince 
 upon this assumed a loud tone and accused me of inoratitudc in 
 
 * Putnam's Monthly Magazine, Feb., 1853, vol. i, 194, 204. tPage356 
 
Not the i)AUPHiif of I'bance 3 
 
 trampling on the overtures of the king, his father, -who, he said, 
 ■was actuated in making the proposition more by feelings of kind- 
 ness and pity towards me than by any other consideration, since 
 his claim to the French throne rested on an entirely different 
 basis to miae, viz. not that of hereditary descent but of popular 
 election. When he spoke in this strain, I spoJre loud also, and 
 said that as he,- by his disclosures, had put me in the position of a 
 superior, I must assume that position and frankly say that my 
 indignation was stirred by the memory that one of the family of 
 Orleans had imbrued his hands in my father's blood and that 
 another now wished to obtain from me an abdication of the 
 throne. When I spoke of superiority, the prince immediately 
 assumed a respectful attitude and remaiued silent for several min- 
 utes. It had now grown very late and we parted with a request 
 from him that I would reconsider the proposal of his father, and 
 not be too hasty in my decision. I returned to my father-in-law's,* 
 and the next day saw the prince again and on his renewal of the 
 subject gave him a similar answer. Before he went away, he 
 said, 'Though we part, I hope we part friends.' " Upon whatever 
 terms they parted, they never met again. 
 
 While this strange tale is fresh in our minds, a few observa- 
 tions concerning it are pertinent : 
 
 First : There was but one person in existence who could sub- 
 stantiate or deny this revelation story and that person denied it 
 as soon as it was brought to his attention. When the February, 
 1853, number of Putnam's Monthly, containing the article, 
 "Have we a Bourbon among us?", arrived in England, the Prince 
 de Joinville was living in Surrey, an exile from his country. By 
 his secretary's hand, he wrote immediately to the London agent of 
 Putnam's, stamping the story of the secret interviews and rev- 
 elation as a work of the imagination, a fable woven wholesale, a 
 speculation upon public credulity, t The issue of fact, thus raised, 
 will occupy us later. 
 
 * Williams had gone to the home of Joseph Jourdain, his father-in-law, 
 upon the arrival of the Oolumhus at Green Bay. 
 
 t Hanson's The Lost Prince, page 404: "Une oeuvre d'imagination, une 
 fable grossi^rement tissue, une speculation sur la oredulite publique." 
 
4 Eleazer Williams 
 
 Second : The most natural action for a person whose affiliation 
 has been attacked, whose beliefs as to his paternity and maternity- 
 have been rudely jostled, would be to consult forthwith the indi- 
 viduals whom before this he had supposed to be his parents. 
 Did Williams inquire of two dusky denizens of Caughnawaga, 
 near Montreal, whom for more than half a century he had called 
 his father and mother? Far from it. His father died, seven years 
 later, ignorant that his son had denied his fatherhood; while it 
 was not until 1851, ten years after the Lake Michigan trip, that 
 his mother first heard, and from alien tongues, that her son had 
 adopted a royal ancestry.* 
 
 Third : A very natural action for a husband, who has learned 
 that he is a king, instead of a half-breed Indian, would be to dis- 
 close his royalty to his wife who is thus a queen and to his son, 
 who is thus his blood -heir to the crown. Not so did Williams. 
 Twelve years after the prince's visit to Green Bay, some friends of 
 Williams' wife, who had read the story in Putnam's Monthly, 
 gave to her her first knowledge that her husband was the blood- 
 successor of sixty-six French kings.t Strange and inexplicable 
 mystery of reticence ! A person is announced to be Louis XVII, 
 the uncrowned legitimate king of France and Navarre, and that 
 person's wife, and his son, and that aged woman, whom all men 
 believe to be his mother, first learn of this announcement, a 
 decade later, from the lips of strangers ! 
 
 Fourth: The whole story of the young dauphin's removal to 
 Canada, and of the prince's request for Ms abdication is inherently 
 improbable. Even admitting his evasion from the Temple, it is 
 improbable that his saviors would have ignored safe, healthy, and 
 
 * Letter dated May 11, 1896, to the author by Edward H. Williams, jr., 
 of Bethlehem, Pa., whose father, still hving in Philadelphia, was present 
 at Caughnawaga, in 1851, when Eleazer Williams' denial of his mother was 
 first revealed to her. 
 
 t Draper's Additional Notes. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, viii, 367. 
 Notwithstanding this ignorance by his family until 1853, WiUiams said in 
 1851: "I am convinced of my royaJJdesoent; so are my family. The idea 
 
 of royalty is in our minds and we wUl never relinquish it. " Hanson's The 
 
 Lost Prince, 346. 
 
Not the Datjphin of France 5 
 
 convenient refuges in Europe, and tave subjected this child of 
 nine years, naturally frail, rendered far more delicate by the rigors 
 of confinement and the torments of his bloodless jailer Simon, to 
 the exposures of a Canadian climate, to the rough experiences of 
 an isolated Indian life; it is improbable that Louis Philippe would 
 have entrusted to his son of but twenty-three years of age, a mis- 
 sion so delicate as an abdication; it is improbable that if Eleazer 
 was the dauphin and was buried from all the world in the Wiscon- 
 sin woods, was ignorant of his magnificent ancestry and morally 
 certain never to learn it, it is improbable, we say, that even the 
 impolitic Orleans princes would deliberately seek him out and 
 reveal to him that very secret which would make their thrones 
 unstable, their crowned heads uneasy. "Were there not enough 
 dauphin pretenders sprinkled about Europe to be thorns in Louis 
 Philippe's side that he should deliberately go about to discover 
 the real heir in America, to be a still deeper sting? 
 
 Fifth : The attitude toward each other of both the prince and 
 WUliams, subsequent to October, 1841, indicates that no momen- 
 tous subject had been discussed then and that no Bourbonic wrath 
 had been aroused. Soon after the prince's departure, Williams 
 sent him a paper relating to Charlevoix and La Salle. The prince's 
 courteous acknowledgement shows no evidence of any secret mat- 
 ter or open resentment. Two years later, in the name of his 
 Indian brethren, Eleazer sent through the prince to Louis Phi- 
 lippe for some books. The books, together with some portraits 
 painted on canvas, were sent with a letter from the prince's secre- 
 tary announcing the king's compliance. A delay in transit brought 
 from the French consul in New York, a note of regret accompany- 
 ing the box of books and pictures and the secretary's letter. This ■ 
 is the probable foundation for Williams' boast that he had received 
 an autograph letter from Louis Philippe. When asked to exhibit 
 the autograph, it was lost. The acknowledgement for the books, 
 which WUliams wrote to Joinville, is certainly not penned by one 
 who considered himself placed, by disclosures made at Green Bay, 
 "in the position of a superior" to the prince, as this extract will 
 show: 
 
6 Eleazee Williams 
 
 " So well pleased am I with the books and so high an opinion 
 do I entertain of your Royal Highness' benevolence and friend- 
 ship, as to embolden me to appear before him as a suppliant for a 
 similar favor. For years, I have been desirous to acquaint myself 
 with the writiags of the French, either ia civil or ecclesiastical 
 histories, as well as in theology. If it is not asking and intruding 
 too much upon your Royal Highness' goodness, may I hope that 
 he will give a favorable hearing to my humble request."* 
 
 It should be stated, parenthetically, that whenever WUliams 
 was called upon to produce original documents — letters, medals, 
 or what not — these were always missing, burned, stolen, mislaid, 
 among his papers at some other place. He boasted, for example, 
 of several missives from French bishops and cardinals, and one 
 from the secretary of Napoleon III, all inquiring about his history. 
 Like the autograph letter from Louis Philippe, they had all disap- 
 peared.! 
 
 Sixth: There is a noteworthy slip of detail concerning the 
 prince's visit in Green Bay on that October day, 1841. Williams 
 informs us that after talking far into the night with the prince, 
 during which he himself meditated four or five hours over the 
 parchment, they separated to meet the next day. The prince, 
 twelve years later, informs us that he remained in Green Bay 
 but half a day.+ Dr. James D. Butler, of the State Historical 
 Society of Wisconsin, prints, in the Nation, New York, that Join- 
 ville did not pass the night in Green Bay.§ To the same effect, is 
 the testimony of Mrs. Elizabeth S. Martin of Green Bay, who 
 met the prince there upon this occasion and who, in a hearty, 
 genial, and unimpaired old age, still survives. She has recorded 
 that the prince did not remain in all over six hours in Green Bay 
 and that the major portion of this time was occupied in prepara- 
 tion for, and in attendance upon, a reception and dinner to which 
 Mrs. Martin, the prince, and WUliams, among others, were invited. 
 Immediately after these festivities, the prince started on his pro- 
 
 * Robertson's The Last of the Bourbon Story.— Putnam's Magazine, new 
 series, July, 1868, vol. ii, p. 96. + Ibid vol. ii, p. 96. 
 
 t Hanson's The Lost Prince, page 40.3 : "Pendant une demi joum^e." 
 § Butler's The Story of Louis XVII.— ^oiioji, N. Y., May 31, 1894, 417, 
 
Not the Dauphin of France 7 
 
 jected equestrian tour, westwJird, tarrying for the night at the 
 house of John McCarty, four or five miles beyond DePere* — 
 instead of passing those nocturnal hours at the Astor House, in 
 Green Bay, begging Eleazer Williams to resign the kingdom of 
 France ! -^ 
 
 Holding still in abeyance the issue of veracity, as between the 
 prince and Williaias, it should not be overlooked that the latter 
 has been introduced, in this paper, in the maturity of his life, with 
 no account of his origin, his nativity, Ms youth, the manner of 
 his living, and how his abiding place in Wisconsin came to be. 
 Along this pathway let us now tread awhile, making such excur- 
 sions from time to time as circumstances demand. 
 
 The raid made on leap-year day, 1704, by the French and Indi- 
 ans, under Captain Hertel de Rouville, on the outlying village of 
 Deerfield ia northwestern Massachusetts, is still the most thrilling 
 story of savage cruelty.f Deerfield's minister. Rev. John Williams, 
 a stern Puritan of stainless character, his wife and five of their 
 children were taken captives, and were started on a bitter journey 
 toward Montreal. The wife soon fell by the way and was massa- 
 cred to avoid the burden of carrying her. The remainder reached 
 their northern destination. Eventually all, save one, a daughter 
 of seven years, found their way back to the colony. This daugh- 
 ter, Eunice, was, as time passed, married to an Indian chieftain 
 at Caughnawaga, on the St. Lawrence river. Her susceptible 
 nature yielded to her environment; she abandoned the religion 
 of her fathers for the Catholicism of her captors and became in 
 every complexion, except that of her skin, an Indian. :{: The mea- 
 ger details preserved of her forest life are pathetic reading and 
 would fill our pen did our subject permit. Her grandson, the 
 
 * Martin's The Uncrowned Hapsburg, 87; and Draper's Note in the 
 copy of that paper in the library of the Wisconsin State Historical Society. 
 
 t Read Penhallow's Indian Wars, 24; Hoyt's Antiquarian Researches, 
 186; Dwight's Travels in New England and New York, vol ii, 67; Park- 
 man's Half - Century of Conflict, i, 52; Sheldon's Deerfield, i, 93; New 
 England Historical and Genealogical Register, ix, 161. 
 
 t WiUiams' Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion, Northampton, 1853, 36; 
 Greenfield, 1800, 45; Boston, 1774, 20. 
 
8 Eleazee Williams 
 
 child of her daughter Sarah and an Indian husband, was Te-ho-ra. 
 gwa^ne-gen, or in our vernacular, Thomas Williams, a warrior of 
 wide renown during the conflict of the American Revolution, 
 fighting against the struggling colonies. The glimpses we have of 
 him, even as an enemy, are of one upright and merciful, one in 
 whom flowered the gentle influences of his New-England ancestry. 
 Thomas Williams' wife, called in our tongue, Mary Ann Eice, 
 was of mingled Indian and New- England extraction, being 
 descended from a captive, taken during a foray upon Marlboro', 
 Massachusetts, early in the eighteenth century.* 
 
 Of Thomas and Mary Ann Williams were many children — 
 apparently not fewer than thirteen. Eleven of these are regis- 
 tered, with the dates of their births, at the mission at Caughna- 
 waga. Two of them, Eleazer and Ignatius, are not so registered.! 
 The non- registration of Eleazer has furnished argument that he 
 was not of the same parentage with the eleven who were regis- 
 tered. The absence of registration is, however, easily explained — 
 he was not born at the registration place, the mission at Caugh- 
 nawaga. Eleazer was born, so his mother has testified, on the 
 shores of Lake George — a frequent hunting-ground of Thomas 
 Williams and his band after the American Revolution. 
 
 How did the mother of Eleazer happen to testify thus? This 
 calls for a brief, mayhap an interesting, digression. In 1851, just 
 when Eleazer's dauphin tale was beginning to circulate, a party 
 of engineers was engaged in constructing a railroad through the 
 Caughnawaga reservation. At their head was Edward H. 
 Williams, M.D. He was a distant relative of Eleazer Williams, 
 and, although of full Anglo-Saxon blood, was an adopted member 
 of the Caughnawagas. He is now, 1902, one of the firm of 
 Baldwin, Williams <fc Co., of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, 
 Philadelphia. One Sunday, during the fall of 1851, Francis 
 
 * Smith's Eleazer Williams. — Wis. Hist. Colls., vi, 309; Letter dated 
 April 6, 1896, from Edward H. Williams, jr., the present genealogist of the 
 Williams family; Ward's Eice Family, 37. 
 
 t Hanson's The Lost]Prinoe, 468, 435; Smith's Eleazer Williams.— Wis- 
 consin Historical' Colleotions, vi, 321. 
 
KoT THE Dauphin op France 9 
 
 Parkman,* who was then examining the records of the Catholic 
 parish churches in Canada, visited Caughnawaga for the purpose 
 of investigating Eleazer's story. Making his wishes known to Dr. 
 Williams, the engineer, the latter introduced him to George de 
 Lorimier, the chief of the tribe. The dauphin story was new to 
 the chief and to all the Caughnawagas. Chief de Lorimier, an 
 Indian of much astuteness and capacity, decided upon a careful 
 investigation. He sent at once for Mary Ann Williams, and for 
 two of her aged Indian friends, a man and a woman. All three 
 were kept apart from eaxjh other and were ignorant why they 
 were summoned. Mary Ann stated without hesitation or reser- 
 vation that Eleazer Williams was her child and that he was bom 
 on the shores of Lake George when her husband with his band 
 was hunting and fishing there. The aged friends of Mary Ann, 
 questioned separately, confirmed in detail what she had stated, 
 both saying that they were with the band at the time the child 
 was born and the squaw adding that, as midwife, she was present 
 at the birth. This examination having been completed, Eleazer's 
 statement of his royal origin was then translated to the assembled 
 Indians. One and all vehemently denounced the tale as a lie, 
 while the little old mother, bursting into tears, exclaimed that she 
 knew Eleazer had been a bad man but she did not know before 
 that he was bad enough to deny his own mother. 
 
 Dr. Williams writes: "The mother of Eleazer was very old, 
 possibly one hundred. She was what might be called feeble- 
 minded as old people are, but not in any way lacking in under- 
 standing. Her testimony came out in pieces as in the case of old 
 people and from the appearance of the Indians and of herself, 
 during and after the reading of the statement, it was evident that 
 they then heard it for the first time."t 
 
 * Dr. WilUama has always supposed that this was Francis Parkman, the 
 historian; if so, his opinion of Eleazer Williams in "Half-Century of Con- 
 flict" can readily be explained. See vol. i, 88. 
 
 + This account of the examination of these aged Indiana was dictated by 
 Dr. Williams to his son, Edward H. Williams, jr., of Bethlehem, Pa., by 
 whom it was sent to the writer. Dr. WOliams' high character warrants 
 the accuracy of his statement. See Nation, New York, June 14, 1894, 446. 
 
10 Eleazeb Williams 
 
 A natural inquiry now presents itself, when was Eleazer born 1 
 Upon looking to him for information, we find that he has given, 
 at different times, three different dates. In 1824, when applying 
 for membership in the masonic fraternity in Green Bay, he wrote 
 that he was then thirty -two years of age,* that is, born in 1792; 
 by claiming, after 1841, that he was the dauphin of France, he 
 asserted that he was bom March 27, 1785;t ina book, J the man- 
 uscript of which he prepared about 1852, but which was not pub- 
 lished until after his death, he declared § that in 1812, he was 
 twenty -three or twenty -four years old; that is, bom in 1788 or 
 1789. Manifestly, he could not have been bom in all three years! 
 When Thomas Williams, in 1800, took his son Eleazer to Long- 
 meadow, Massachusetts, to be educated, he informed the pastor of 
 the local church that his son was born May, 1788. || This date fits 
 cleverly into a gap in the chronological order of the births of 
 Thomas' children as registered at the Caughnawaga mission; it 
 corresponds approximately with the only date of birth which 
 Eleazer himself ever put into print, and the year 1788 is the year 
 that was adopted by the present genealogist of the Williams 
 family as the result of his investigations. Thomas Williams also 
 informed the Longmeadow pastor that Eleazer was baptized in 
 his infancy, and was named for his, Thomas', greatunole. Rev. 
 Eleazer Williams, first minister of Mansfield, Connecticut, Elea^ 
 zerll — a christian name of much solemnity which has degene- 
 rated into Lazarre. 
 
 Therefore, as Eleazer Williams was the son of Thomas and Mary 
 Ann Williams and was bom on the shores of Lake George in 
 May, 1788, and as Louis XVII was the son of Louis XVI, king 
 
 * Smith's Eleazer Williama,— Wisconsin Historical Collections, vi, 316. 
 
 t The dauphin's birth date is in many books ; see among others, Cabanas' 
 Les Morts Mysterieuses de THistoire, 416; Prevault's Vie de Louis XVII 
 9; Beauohesne's Louis XVI, London, 1853, page 11. 
 
 X Life of Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, by Eleazer Williams, with introduction 
 by Franklin B. Hough, Albany, 1859. 
 
 § Life of Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, page 69. 
 
 II Proceedings at the Longmeadow Centennial, October 17, 1883, p 230 
 H Longmeadow Centennial, 230. 
 
Not the Dauphin of France 11 
 
 of France and Marie Antoinette, archduchess of Austria, and was 
 born at Versailles, France, in March, 1785, we have here what 
 Mr. Weller might call an " alleybi." 
 
 Vivid pictures are preserved of Eleazer's boyhood at Oaughna- 
 waga, beginning with his third year. Grand Baptiste, who during 
 much of his manhood, was the pilot of the Lachine rapids of the 
 St. Lawrence, was the companion and playmate of Eleazer from 
 their earliest years. He has told us how Eleazer, clad only in a 
 shirt, barefooted and barelimbed roamed about the Indian hamlet, 
 suffering from exposure to cold and storms, and scarring his legs 
 from rough contact with rocks, briars, and thorns.* These inclem- 
 encies, a fall over a precipitous cliff, f the scrofulous tendencies in 
 this branch of the Williams family, and the self-infliction, later in 
 life, by means of lashes and tartar emetic, of blisters suggesting 
 marks of shackles and of blows, go a long way toward explaining 
 the brands and scars upon Eleazer's adult person which he was 
 fond of exhibiting as showing where the jailer Simon had bruised 
 him in the Temple tower. J 
 
 This subject of marks and scars allows another brief digression. 
 While the European false dauphins were prevalent, and were 
 annoying the Duchesse d'AngoulSme, sister of Louis XVII, with 
 their demands for recognition, she had declared that she would be 
 able to recognize her genuine brother by the inoculation marks 
 upon his shoulders, that tallied with the Hke marks upon her own 
 shoulders and were peculiar to the royal children of France. § 
 Forthwith, the European pretenders, all of them, had upon their 
 shoulders these peculiar inoculation scars. Scars, you know, "are 
 not protected from piracy by any law of copyxight."|| Eleazer 
 Williams showed these same inoculation scars. What would you ? 
 You surely would not have our American pretender less carefully 
 equipped and panoplied for his imposition than his European 
 brethren? 
 
 *" Smith's, Eleazer Williams, — Wis. Historical Collections, vi, 313-315. 
 
 t Naikm, New York, June 14, 1894, page 446. 
 
 t Vinton's Louis XVII and Eleazer Williams — Putnam's Magazine, n.s., 
 Sept., 1868, ii, 340. § Ibid, 339. II London Athenseiim, Feb. 3, 1894, 142. 
 
12 Eleazer Williams 
 
 Eleazer's emergence into civilization occurred in this manner: 
 In the winter of 1796-7, his father, who never forgot his New- 
 England cousinship, was visiting, in Longmeadow, the family of 
 his distant kin, Nathaniel Ely. He suggested that Thomas send 
 one of his sons to Longmeadow, for education, with the idea of his 
 becoming, eventually, a missionary to the Indians at Caughnawaga. 
 Somewhat later, this proposition took more definite and enlarged 
 form. As a result, on January 23, 1800, Thomas Williams, with 
 his two sons, Eleazer and John, arrived in Longmeadow and the 
 boys began to live with Mr. Ely.* 
 
 A few sentences from Colton's Tour of the American LaJces, 
 will photograph these Indian lads as they emerged from uncivil- 
 ized and sylvan scenes into the routine of a New-England school. 
 Colton, a fellow pupil at Longmeadow school, was an eye-witness 
 of what he has printed : f 
 
 "From the wildness of their nature and habits it was neces- 
 sary for the master to humor their eccentricities until they might 
 gradually accommodate themselves to discipline; and but for the 
 benevolent object in view and the good anticipated, it was no 
 small sacrifice to endure the disorder which their manners at first 
 created. Unused to restraint and amazed at the orderly scene 
 around them, they would suddenly jump and cry Umph! or some 
 other characteristic and guttural exclamation, and then perhaps 
 spring across the room and make a true Indian assault upon a 
 child on whom they had fixed their eyes, to his no small afl&ight 
 and consternation; or else dart out of the house and take to their 
 heels in such a direction as their whims might incline them. 
 Confinement they could not endure at first, and so long as they 
 did nothing but create disorder (and that they did very efiectually) 
 they were indulged until by degrees they became used to disci- 
 pline and began to learn. Their first attempts by imitation to 
 enunciate the letters of the Roman alphabet were qtiite amus- 
 ing—so difficult was it for them to form their tongues and other 
 organs to the proper shapes. If the children of the school 
 laughed (as there was some apology for doing), these boys would 
 
 * Longmeadow Centennial, 230-231; Hanson'a The Lost Prince 194 
 
 t Colton's Tour of the American Lakes, London, 1833 i 162. ' 
 
Not the Dauphin of Eeanoe 13 
 
 sometimes cast a contemptuous roll of the eye over the little 
 assembly and then leaving an Umph! behind them would dart 
 out of the house in resentment.'' 
 
 Think you, either of these youths, prior to entering Longmea- 
 dow school, had ever dwelt in the palace at Versailles, and had 
 his infantile intellect enlightened, or his manners moulded, by the 
 best instructors in France? 
 
 Aided by earnest teachers and assisted by salutary domestic 
 discipline, the young Indian foresters slowly began to tame. The 
 development of Eleazer's powers and capacities was not slow 
 although he never became a great scholar or even a studious man. 
 He visited about with his New-England relatives; he studied with 
 clerical tutors in preparation for his mission. In 1807, he visited 
 Hanover, New Hampshire, and indeed is said to have been "edu- 
 cated" at Dartmouth College.* While there he wore a tinsel 
 badge or star on his left breast and styled himself Count de Lor- 
 rainef — a title discoverable in no book of heraldry. 
 
 He visited also in New York where he was brought in close 
 contact with Bishop Hobart of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
 Besides this, he made at least two trips to Caughnawaga at the 
 instance of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
 Missions, to ascertain the prospect of introducing Protestantism 
 among his people. While on one of these trips, in 1811, the 
 Jesuits approached him with a proposition to accept authority 
 from their bishop as a teacher to his tribe. Although educated 
 by Congregationalists, although attracted toward Episcopalianism, 
 he was not averse to this new offer. Indeed, he is said to have been 
 commissioned by the Jesuits as a teacher and to have received 
 from them a good church library with prayer-books and missals.:}: 
 
 * Parkman's Half -Century of Conflict, 87. President Tucker of Dart- 
 mouth College fails to find Williams' name in catalogue or college records. 
 In U.S. Magazine and Democratic Review, July, 1849, page 13, in History 
 of the Dauphin, it is stated that Eleazer was sent to the academy connected 
 with Dartmouth. 
 
 t Nation, New York, June 14, 1894, page 446. 
 
 J EUis' New York Indians. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, ii, p. 418; 
 Ellis' Recollections. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, vii, 243 note. 
 
14 Eleazee Williams 
 
 Now that "Williams' life in New England has ended, by his 
 return to Oaughnawaga, the question arises, whence came all this 
 money for the private tutoring of this young student, for this 
 traveling hither and yon about the country? From some myster- 
 ious Frenchmen who were supporting this exiled Bourbon, reply 
 those who adhere to "Williams' royal claims. Indeed, there 
 appeared in a copy of the Albany Knickerbocker, a communication 
 over a ficticious signature, which was the origin of the whisper- 
 ings about this boasted foreign support. The draft of this com- 
 munication, with erasures, interlineations, and corrections, all in 
 Williams' handwriting, was found in his trunk after his death. 
 Thus was indicated the employment, in the case of the Kniolcer- 
 bocker, of one of Williams' common methods of booming himself 
 — the flamboyant presentation of his history to newspapers over 
 false names.* The assertion of foreign money for his education 
 and support sprang entirely from his own imagination. The 
 contemporaneous records of the American Board of Commissioners 
 for Foreign Missions and the Statutes of the State of Massachu- 
 setts prove that that board and that state together with private 
 charity paid for his personal expenses and his tuition during his 
 New England residence. This documentary evidence has substan- 
 tiation from papers found among WUliams' effects after his death. 
 Among these were the original bills for his instruction and other 
 outlays together with the evidence that the American Board had 
 been the almoner for their liquidation.! But the expectations of 
 the American Board which were the inducements for these pay- 
 
 * Draper's Additional Notes — Wis. Hist. Coll., viii, p. 360; Robertson's 
 The Last of the Bourbon Story — Putnam's Magazine, n. s., July, 1868, ii, 
 90, 93, 97. The author of this latter article, Rev. Charles F. Robertson, 
 later Episcopal bishop of Missouri, had charge of Williams' papers after his 
 death. Here is a curious instance of the way Williams operated : There 
 appeared in the TJ. S. Magazine and Democratic Review for July, 1849, a, 
 review of H. B. Ely's History of the Dauphin, Son of Louis XVI of Prance. 
 This is a " review "of a hook that never existed, by an author that never 
 existed; both book and author being conjured out of the brain of Eleazer 
 Williams, as an opportunity to bring himself before the public. 
 
 + Robertson's The Last of the Bgurbon Story,— Putnam's Magazine, n.s., 
 July, 1868, ii, 93. 
 
Not the Dauphin op France 15 
 
 ments were frustrated by Williams allying himself with another 
 Christian denomination and by the entrance of Williams upon 
 military service. 
 
 In 1 808, four years before the second war with Great Britain 
 was actually fanned into flame, President Jefferson had written* 
 to various bands of Indians on the border representing that the 
 impending conflict was no quarrel of theirs and urging them to 
 remain neutral. Moreover, he promised that should the British 
 claim their services and they chose instead to break up their set- 
 tlements and cross into the United States, he would find them 
 other homes and make them children of the young Republic. 
 When the war actually broke out, the president sent a personal 
 invitation to Thomas Williams, as one of the influential Iroquois 
 chiefs, asking him to repress any belligerent movements which 
 might be contemplated by his or other tribes against the United 
 States and promising him full indemnity against any losses which 
 his loyalty to the Republic might occasion; besides, support for 
 his family and himself during the war. Confiding in these assur- 
 ances, Thomas Williams with other Oau^nawagas removed, in 
 1813, from Canada into Northern New Yorkt — a short removal 
 in point of distance, a long removal in point of results. With 
 this change of allegiance, Thomas entered the American army, and 
 Eleazer — to the regret of his New-England patrons — followed his 
 example. J 
 
 By invitation, Eleazer joined the troops under General Jacob 
 Brown, in confidential service, collecting, through the Canada 
 Indians, important information of the movements of the British 
 forces, and thereby in several instances rendering very valuable 
 assistance to the American interests.§ For this service, as well as 
 for active military operations, he received, he tells us,|| the com- 
 
 * A copy of this letter is attached to the Report of House Committee on 
 Military Affairs, No. 84, 34th Congress, Third Session, January 16, 1857. 
 
 t WiUiains' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 72, 73. 
 
 t Colton's Tour of the American Lakes, i, 164. 
 
 § Ellis' New York Indians. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, ii, 418. 
 
 II Report of the House Committee on Military Affairs, No. 303, Claim, of 
 Eleazer Williams, 35th Congress, First Session, April 17, 1858. 
 
16 Eleazee Williams 
 
 mendation of Ms officers for zeal, bravery, and fidelity. Williams' 
 own accounts of his achievements in the field are preserved in his 
 Journal and in a biography of his father which he prepared*— 
 accounts which are so fulsome and so self- laudatory as to suggest 
 that the authentic history of the war of 1812 is yet to be written. 
 In the biography, the author calls himself "Lieutenant- Colonel 
 Eleazer Williams," "Colonel E. WilKams, the Superintendent 
 General"! — titles which his most loyal panegyrists withhold, titles 
 which will be sought in vain in the archives of the War Depart- 
 ment, titles which are not accorded him by the representatives of 
 the government in his rejected application for a pension. Doubt- 
 less, like the very nebulous appellation of Count de Lorraine, 
 these military honors were self- bestowed. 
 
 The application made by Williams, in 1851, for a pension was 
 based upon a wound received at the land -battle of Plattsburg, 
 September 14, 1814. His father's nursing and Indian remedies 
 restored him to health and vigor after some weeks' confinement. J 
 Upon the close of the war, Thomas Williams and his soldier- son 
 joined the family at its new home at Saint Regis,§ an Indian vil- 
 lage bisected by the present boundary between Canada and New 
 York. It appears, however, that both Thomas and his wife 
 returned to Caughnawaga in the evening of their days to die.|| 
 
 But Eleazer was too restless and too ambitious to remain long 
 in this seclusion. Moreover, he was discredited by his tribal 
 companions. Empowered, in 1812, to draw from the State of 
 New York an annuity of $266, due them upon some land trans- 
 fers, he received the sum regularly every year until 1820; but not 
 one cent ever reached the annuitants.H In 1820, by reason of 
 
 * His Journal is incorporated in great part in Hanson's The Lost Prince; 
 the biography of his father has been mentioned at page 10. 
 
 t Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 66, 78, 81, 88. 
 
 J Hanson's The Lost Prince, 266, 269. 
 
 § Ellis' New York Indians. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, ii, 418. 
 A description of St.Regis by DeCosta is in Galaxy, N. Y., 1870, ix, 124. 
 
 II Thomas Williams died in his 90th year, Sept. 16, 1848.— N. E. Hist, 
 and Gen. Register, iii, 103; his wife died May 1, 1856. — Report of House 
 Com. on Military Affairs, No. 303, 35th Congress, 1st session, Apr. 17, 1858. 
 
 II Smith's Bleaker Wim?,ms,— Wiswnsjn Historical Collections, vi, 333, 
 
Not the Dauphin of Feance 17 
 
 representations made by the Canadian government to the State of 
 New York, payment to the unfaithful steward was suspended. 
 Perhaps this incident helps to explain the fact that when, half a 
 century later, Eleazer Williams was wrapt in his shroud, not an 
 Indian brave attended his funeral* 
 
 Wandering southward, Williams in November, 1814, visited 
 Oneida Castle, near Rome, New York, renewing acquaintance he 
 had previously made with some Iroquois of the Oneida tribe, t 
 While there, he decided to undertake evangelistic woi-k under the 
 authority of some church. Proceeding to New York, he was, on 
 May 21, 1815, received into the communion of the Episcopal 
 body by Bishop HobartJ and on March 23, 1816, he was again at 
 Oneida Castle as lay- reader and catechist. § 
 
 He was well adapted for evangelizing work among the aborigi- 
 nes. He had become sufficiently versed in the Christian system 
 and in theology, and was quite an authority on Indian history 
 and lore. Moreover, he was a natural orator, a graceful and 
 powerful speaker — most invaluable aids to persuasion and success 
 among the Indians. || Had he been content, in the humble avoca^ 
 tion of a schoolmaster an'd evangelist, faithfully to pursue in 
 sequestered vales, the noiseless tenor of his way, he would belike 
 have rounded out for himself a useful and an honorable career 
 and would have escaped having the events of his life tortured out 
 of all semblance to reality by the novelist and the playwright. 
 
 Some scattering points concerning Williams' five years at Oneida 
 Castle must content us : 
 
 First point: His acquaintance with Gen. Albert G. Ellis. In 
 November, 1819, ElUs, then nineteen years of age, and a native of 
 Oneida county, New York, took up his abode at Oneida Castle at 
 the urgent solicitation of Williams. H The understanding was that 
 
 * Huntoon'a Eleazer Williams, in i^Memorial Biographies. — N. E. Hist, 
 and Gen. Society, iii, 252, 270. 
 
 t Hanson's The Lost Prince, 270. J Ibid, 274. 
 
 § Christian Journal and Literary Register, New York, February, 1817; 
 Hanson's The Lost Prince, 276. 
 
 II Ellia' New York Indians. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, ii, 419. 
 
 H Draper's Sketch of Gen. Albert G. EUis,— Wis. Hist, Coll., vii, 207, 
 
18 Eleazee Williams 
 
 Ellis was to instruct the Indian children and to be a companion, 
 secretary and assistant for Williams. Both moved together to 
 Wisconsin. Gen. Ellis lived at Green Bay, Wisconsin, the remain- 
 der of his days, dying there, universally respected and honored, 
 December 23, 1885, after a residence of sixty-four years.* Gen. 
 Ellis is a frequent authority concerning Eleazer Williams, as the 
 notes disclose. 
 
 Second point : Eleazer Williams, save in Indian affairs, was far 
 from being a learned man. Either his New -England education 
 had been superficial or he had forgotten his acquirements. His 
 English was very poor — cases, moods, tenses, were an unknown 
 land. Greek was an utter stranger to him; with Latin he had 
 a bowing acquaintance; and as to French, he could read narrative 
 and history quite well, but he could not speak a single word res- 
 pectably. His French -Canadian wife, of whom anon, more than 
 once said to him, "Now, Mr. WUliams, I do beg of you, never to 
 try to talk French; you can not speak a single word right." His 
 French pronunciation was such as ignorant Indians on the edge 
 of Canada might acquire, but nothing more and that poorly, t 
 And yet, we are called upon to believe that this Gallic stumbler 
 was reared in the very centre of pure Parisian, that he was the 
 brother of the Duchesse d'AngoulSme, that his infant lips had 
 been instructed by Marie Antoinette, and that he had been the 
 pupil of the Duchesse de Polignac and the Abb6 d'Avaux ! Semi- 
 idiocy for a half- score years could never have reduced the genu- 
 ine dauphin to such lingual imbecility. 
 
 Third poitit: Williams' reminiscences. When Williams took 
 up his residence at Oneida Castle, he occupied, as his abode, the 
 homestead of the sometime -deceased head -chief of the Oneidas 
 Skanandoah. To this homestead, Williams built an addition for 
 school purposes and here was young Ellis' dominion. On every 
 
 Thursday afternoon, however, the Indians who would attend 
 
 young men, young women, aged persons — were assembled in this 
 room and treated by Williams to discourses of self-glorification. 
 
 ' 32d Annual Beport, Wisconsin Historical Society, 20. 
 
 + Ellis' Eleazer Williams. — Wisconsin Hist. Coll., viii, 323, 324 331 349. 
 
Not the Dadphin of France 19 
 
 These talks were devoted almost entirely to himself, to his birth 
 and chUdhood at Caughnawaga, to his infantile precocity, to his 
 always victorious strifes with his playmates, to his white ancestors 
 of the Williams family, to his nomadic exploits with his father at 
 Lake George, to any marvelous feat of his forest life which would 
 prove to his untutored listeners how mighty a hunter, how great 
 a hero he was.* This man of reminiscences, however, is the same 
 who in 1851, told his promoter, Rev. Mr. Hanson, in order to 
 explain his ignorance of French persons and of localities in and 
 about Paris, "I know nothing about my infancy. Everything 
 that occurred to me is blotted out, entirely erased, irrecoverably 
 gone. My mind is a blank until thirteen or fourteen years of 
 age."t 
 
 This little school -room incident has its large significance. If 
 it be true as Williams' adherents gravely inform us, J that Eleazer 
 the disguised dauphin, between the period of his adoption by 
 Thomas Williams at ten years of age and his removal to Long- 
 meadow in 1800, had a fall into the limpid flood of Lake George, 
 by which a deep gash was cut in his head, and as a result of 
 which distinct recollection began, after a period of mental imbecil- 
 ity and blankness; how happens it that, in these discourses to the 
 Oneida aborigines, whose brains he was filling with his own mag- 
 nificent proportions, his memory reverted, not to the gorgeous 
 halls at Versailles, not to the gay avenues of rollicking Paris, not 
 to the long line of his royal sires stretching to Hugh Capet, not 
 to the turbulent excitements of the dawning Revolution, not to 
 the somber seclusion of the dreadful Temple, but to the childish 
 freaks of his Indian infancy, to the leafy retreats of Caughna- 
 waga, to his Indian playmates in these woody shades, to hunting 
 and trapping and fishing at Lake George, to his austere strain of 
 pale-faced ancestors in Deerfield and Roxbury? 
 
 Fourth point: Williams' personal appearance. While he was 
 thus exalting Ms ancestors, one of them paid him a visit. Twice 
 
 * Ellis' Eleazer Williams. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, viii, 329. 
 + Hanson's The Lost Prince, 339. 
 J Hanson's The Lost Prince, 183; Mrs. Evans' Story of Louis XVII, 16. 
 
20 Elbazer Williams 
 
 Ttomas Williams traveled to Oneida Castle to visit his son. 
 Young Ellis noticed, as others noticed, how much the son favored 
 his father. If the son was Bourbonic — and no one denies that 
 his appearance, especially ia youth, strongly suggested the French* 
 — then was his father Bourbonic also, for the latter had the pecu- 
 liar cast of countenance stronger than the son.f Lorimier, the 
 head chief of the Caughnawagas iu 1851, had the same features ia 
 a high degree; so also had Grand Baptiste, the Lachine pilot ; so 
 also had another half-breed, Francis Mount, a Rice relative of 
 Eleazer. Indeed these "Bourbon" facial characteristics were com- 
 mon to all the Caughnawaga descendants from white ancestors. 
 Lorimier exhibited to Dr. Williams, at the investigation, sev- 
 eral members of the tribe who had the peculiar or "Bourbon'' 
 features..! The infantile resemblance, real or fancied, to Louis 
 XVII, to which the attention of his mother and himself was 
 called ia his childhood by passing soldiers,§ doubtless started the 
 busy and wily miad of the adult Eleazer upon the scheme of per- 
 sonation and deception which a half- century of explanation has 
 not, it appears, completely exposed. || 
 
 Yet Eleazer did not lack traces of his swarthy birth. His skin 
 was dark and of peculiar Indian texture. The pension surgeon, 
 who examined the wound received by Williams at Plattsburg, 
 Laforms us that his unexposed skin was more the color of an 
 Indian than a white man. II When the body of Willams was laid 
 out for burial, in 1858, his skin had turned to a dark red, surely 
 betokening, the authorities state, his Indian origin,** 
 
 His hair, eyebrows and eyelashes were of the most iaky raven 
 
 * Robertson's The Last of the Bourbon Story, — Putnam's Magazine, n. s., 
 
 ii, 92; Vinton's Louis XVI and Eleazer Williams.— Putnam's Magazine, u. 
 
 ., ii, 333; Francis' Old New York, 165n. ; Harpers' Magazine, June, 1882, 148. 
 
 f Ellis' Eleazer Williams. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, viii, 348. 
 
 t Letters from Edward H. Williams, jr., April 6, 15, 1896. 
 
 § Neville's Historic Green Bay, 223; Huutoon's Eleazer WiUiama, 255. 
 
 II Parkman's Half-Oentury of Conflict, i, 88. 
 
 IT Williams' Eedeemed Captive, Northampton, 1853, page 173 
 
 ** Letter from Edward H. Williams, jr., May 2, 1896; Butler's The 
 Story of Louis XVll.— Nation, New York, May 31, 1894, page 417, 
 
Not the Dauphin of France 21 
 
 blackness.* His complexion and hair stamped him as of mixed 
 savage and civilized blood ; indeed, one connoisseur writes that 
 Eleazer had that peculiar tint -which distinguished half-breeds 
 among the Six Nations from half-breeds of the west.t His dark 
 complexion, so opposite from the blond features of Louis XVII J 
 was noticed by Mrs. Kinzie in 1830, who had she not heard his 
 Connecticut relatives so often call him their Indian cousin might 
 have thought him a Mexican or a Spaniard. § "Williams' ears also 
 betrayed him,|| while his Indian habit of "toeing in" could never 
 be overcome even after he became "King of France." H 
 
 Fifth point: Williams as an authority on Indian affairs. Allu- 
 sion has already been made to his familiarity with aboriginal lore 
 and to the reputation he had acquired thereby. While he was 
 at Oneida Castle, letters reached Viinfi from New York, Philadel- 
 phia, Hartford, Boston, inquiring about labors of missionaries 
 among the Indians; the travels and discoveries of La Salle, Hen- 
 nepin, Marquette; early forays of the red men upon New-England 
 settlements, and topics of kindred nature. The Rev. Samuel F. 
 Jarvis, D.D., Colonel Elihu Hoyt, Franklin B. Hough, and Mrs. 
 Lydia Huntley Sigourney, among others, sought his experience, 
 knowledge, and study concerning Indian history, manners, and 
 traditions.** Yet, there is grave reason to fear, in the cases of 
 two, at least, of these inquirers that Williams deliberately deceived 
 them concerning the massacre at Deerfield. While Epephras and 
 EIOiu Hoyt were preparing their "Antiquarian Researches," they 
 conferred with Williams and received some quite new matter 
 concerning the massacre at Deerfield in 1704. For instance, 
 Williams told them that on a recent visit to Canada he had found 
 a silk overdress which his ancestress, Mrs. Eunice Williams, wore 
 that fateful morning when the Indians hurried her off directly 
 
 * Ellis' Eleazer Williams. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, viii, 348. 
 
 f Trowbridge's Eleazer Wmiams. — Wisconsin Historical Coll., vii, 414. 
 
 t Beauchesne's Louis XVII, London, 1853, i, 20. 
 
 § Mrs. Kinzie's Wau-Bun, New York, 1856, page 52. 
 
 II Shea on Eleazer Williams. — Am. Hist. Record, July, 1872, page 300. 
 
 IT Letter from Edward H, Williams, jr., May 2, 1896. 
 
 **Ilobertson's The Last of the Bourbon Story. — Putnam's Mag., n.s. ii, 94. 
 
22 Eleazer Williams 
 
 after the sacking of tlie village. But it is exceedingly improbable 
 that Mrs. "Williams stopped to don her party gown on that mas- 
 sacre morning, -while it is a fact that she was tomahawked one day's 
 march out of Deerfield and her body left, unplundered, as it fell, 
 by retreating savages. Likewise, Williams told the Hoyts that 
 returning commanders of expeditions were required to deposit in 
 one of the principal convents in Canada copies of the journals of 
 their expeditions, and that he, Eleazer, had found in a convent in 
 Canada a copy of Rouville's journal of his raid upon Deerfield. 
 But, no such deposit of these documents in convents was ever 
 required, no such documents were ever so deposited and no eye, 
 save Eleazer's, seems to have seen Rouville's journal. It may also 
 be doubted whether Eleazer WUlLams, being an individual of the 
 male sex, had ever been allowed to investigate convents ! Still 
 again, Eleazer related to the Hoyts, and to others, that when 
 Deerfield was destroyed the Indians removed the church -bell, 
 conveyed it as far as Lake Champlain and buried it there; that, 
 later, it was dug up, conveyed to Canada and hung in the Indian 
 church at St. Regis. But apart from the circumstance that St. Re- 
 gis was not established until half a century after Deerfield was 
 raided, the Deerfield church had no bell.* The practisiug of this 
 imposition upon Mrs. Sigourney has given us her dainty poetic 
 gem. The Bell of St.Eegis.f Somewhat later, about 1850, Williams 
 attempted a fraud upon the State of New York. J He ofiered to 
 sell to the secretary of state Marquette's Journal and his original 
 map which Williams claimed to have found in the ruius of the 
 Caughnawaga church. But the Caughnawaga church was not 
 in ruins and the original Marquette Journal and map were, at the 
 time Eleazer ofiered to sell them and still are, one of the chief 
 jewels of St. Mary's College, Montreal, and beyond purchase. § 
 
 * Hoyt's Antiquarian Kesearohes, 193; New England Historical and Gene- 
 alogical Register, xxviii, 287; Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc, 1869-70, 311. 
 
 t In LongfeUow's Poems of Places. -America, 98. Read Hough's St Law- 
 rence and Franklin Counties, 115; De Costa's Story of the Bell GaJaxv 
 
 N.Y., January, 1870, page 124; Hosmer's How Thankful was Bewitched! 
 
 t Shea on Eleazer Williams.— American Hist. Record, July, 1872 300. 
 
 § Wmsor's Cartier to Frontenac, 247; Winsor's Narrative and Critical 
 History, iv, 217. 
 
Not the Dauphin of France 23 
 
 These o'er-true tales are profitless narratives, save as tiey teach 
 that he who would deliberately, even though mischievously, deceive 
 men and women and a sovereign state, would fabricate a parch- 
 ment into the hands of the Prince de Joinville and manufacture 
 a proposal of abdication for his lips. 
 
 Sixth point : "Williams' plan of western empire. This large 
 subject must be greatly condensed. With whom the idea origina- 
 ted of peopling these Occident shores with orient aborigines — 
 whether with the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., or with Williams, 
 or with some members of the tribes themselves, is immaterial 
 here.* There were three motives, operating from three different 
 directions, in favor of removing the New York Indians : The 
 motive of Dr. Morse and the Stockbridges, that the latter and 
 their companions might have Christian homes, free from Caucas- 
 ian contamination; the motive of Williams, that he might lead 
 the Mohawks and their alKes to vast areas for a grand imperial 
 confederacy; the motive of the New -York Land Company, that 
 its already acquired preemption right might attach to the fertile 
 lands of the New-York Indians, which would happen as soon as 
 these should quit the state. f 
 
 Williams, however, was never able to enlist the Iroquois in 
 general, or the Oneidas in particular, in his plan for empire. Very 
 few wished to move; still fewer wished to move under the leader- 
 ship of one whose influence for good had waned steadily, month 
 by month, of his five years' residence among them. Broken faith, 
 unpaid debts, withheld trust-money, were all stored up against 
 him. When, therefore, in the Spring of 1821, for the purpose of 
 treating with the Winnebagoes and Menominees at Green Bay, a 
 party of Indians left Oneida Castle for Buffalo and the Lakes, 
 Williams was of the company to be sure, but not as the represen- 
 tative of the Indians with whom he had lived for the last five 
 years, but as the self- constituted representative of the St. Regis 
 
 * Ellis' New York Indians.— Wis. Hist. Coll., ii, 416, 420, 421; EUis' 
 EleazerWilliams.— Wisconsin Hist. Coll., viii, 331; Marsh's Stockbridges. — 
 Wisconsin Historical Collections, iv, 300. 
 
 t Davidson's In Unnamed Wisconsin, 55; Sutherland's Early Wisconsin 
 Exploration and Settlement. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, x, 278. 
 
24 Elkazer Williams 
 
 Indians of northern New York, -who, more than five years before, 
 
 had repudiated him.* 
 
 His first vie-w of his future home was in August, 1821. t After 
 much difiiculty, his party succeeded in negotiating a treaty with 
 the Wisconsin Indians, but it called for so meagre a strip of 
 territory and for so exorbitant a compensation that the report of 
 it at Oneida Castle drew out all the pent up indignation of the 
 Oneidas. They forwarded to Bishop Hobart a document dated 
 November 21, 1821, remonstrating against the scheme to rob 
 them of their homes and make them fugitives and vagabonds, 
 cautioning him against recognizing WUliams as having any 
 authority to represent them either civilly or religiously, and 
 requesting that he be withdrawn. ;{: 
 
 No attention seems to have been paid to this document and no 
 further action was attempted by the Oneidas, as Williams' next 
 visit to Wisconsin, in 1822, closed his residence in New York and 
 opened a new chapter m his career. 
 
 The second party for Green Bay contained few if any Iroquois 
 but many Brothertowns, Stockbridges, and Munsees. After much 
 parleying, in which Williams urged many plausible arguments 
 and made many fulsome promises, the Wisconsin Indians finally 
 entered into a treaty with their visitors, admitting the New- York 
 Indians to an occupancy in common with them of all their coun- 
 try without reserve — a treaty which related to nearly one -half of 
 the present State of Wisconsin and became the source of endless 
 trouble.§ The next season about one hundred and fifty Oneidas 
 and as many Stockbridges removed to the new possessions. But 
 the implacable hostility of the Six Nations, as a whole, continued 
 and although Oneidas and Stockbridges dribbled year after year 
 into the new territory, the fewness of the numbers was a bitter 
 
 * Ellis' Eleazer Williams. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, viii, 334; 
 Whittlesey's KecoUections. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, i, 168 note. 
 
 + Durrie's Green Bay, 8. 
 
 J Davidson's In Unnamed Wisconsin, 64; Ellis' Eleazer Williams. 
 
 Wisconsin Historical Collections, viii, 336. 
 
 § Ellis' Recollections. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, vii, 225; Ellis' 
 New York Indians. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, ii, 428. 
 
Not the Dauphin op France 25 
 
 disappointment to Williams and a menace to his imperial ambi- 
 tions.* 
 
 On Marcli 3, 1823, Eleazer Williams married Mary Jourdain 
 of Green Bay.t She was the daughter of Joseph Jourdain, the 
 blacksmith of the Indian department at the Bay. Her mother 
 was the daughter of Michael Gravel, and the granddaughter of a 
 Menominee chief. + She was a pretty girl and the owner of a large 
 acreage. § At her marriage, she was fourteen years of age and 
 her husband thirty-five. She was at the time betrothed to a worthy 
 young trader and was not consulted as to her willingness to marry 
 "priest Williams," nor was she even allowed a woman's privilege 
 of a courtship, but was notified on that March morning that she 
 need not go to school that day as she was to be married that 
 evening to "priest WUliams."!] In the fall of 1825, Williams took 
 his young wife to New York where Bishop Hobart baptised and 
 confirmed her and gave her his surname. This ceremony excited 
 almost as vivid a sensation in the fashionable world as had the 
 christianization of Pocahontas ia London, two centuries before.H 
 In 1846, Williams informed the then genealogist of the Williams 
 family that his wife, Mary Hobart Williams, was a distant relative 
 of the THn g of France from whom he had been honored with sev- 
 eral splendid gifts and honors, and among the rest, a golden star.** 
 Williams also stated that the Prince de Joinville was a relative of 
 his wife and that this relationship caused the visit which that prince 
 made to him in 1841; and the gifts that followed the visittf— 
 meaning the interview, with the account of which this paper 
 opened. 
 
 No comment is offered upon this story except to urge that if the 
 prince was a relative of Mrs. Williams, he was a very ungallant 
 
 * Ellis' New York Indians.— Wisconsin Historical Collections, ii, 430. 
 
 + Hanson's The Lost Prince, 300. 
 
 t Grignon'a Recollections.— Wisconsin Historical Collections, vii, 253. 
 
 § TrowbridgeJs Eleazer WiUiams.— Wis. Hist. Coll., vii, 414; McCaU's 
 Journal.— Wis. Hist. Coll., xii, 185; Hanson's The Lost Pnnce, 300. 
 
 II Draper's Additional Notes.— Wis. Hist. CoU., viii, 367 note. 
 
 IT Martin's Uncrowned Hapsburg, 92; Neville's Green Bay, 222. 
 
 ** WUliams' Williams Family, 96. 
 
 ■H- Williams' Redeemed Captive, Northampton, 1853, page 177. 
 
26 Elbazee Williams 
 
 young Frencliiiian to travel all the distance from Paris to Green 
 
 Bay and not even tender his respects to his kinswoman. 
 
 Mrs. Williams had three children — two of them daughters who 
 died unmarried; her son John, born about 1825, was in 1867, the 
 captain of a steamboat on Lake Winnebago* and died in 1884 
 from injuries received in an explosion.! 
 
 Fragments of the Journal kept by Mrs. Williams belong to the 
 Wisconsin State Historical Society. From perusing these pages, 
 one infers her a woman of limited education, of great vivacity and 
 shrewdness. Its pages are scanned in vain for evidences of affec- 
 tion for her husband, who is always "Mr. Williams." Almost the 
 only verbal flower of love that peeps above the surface of this 
 diary- garden is the brief entry, "My very dear grandson. Genie, 
 died in Oshkosh," with the date. Mrs. Williams died upon her 
 farm, on July 21, 1886.J 
 
 During Williams' visit to the East in 1826, he was ordained as 
 a deacon by Bishop Hobart.§ He preached at the post-school in 
 Green Bay after his return, using as the basis of his discourses, 
 sermons of his remote ancestor. Rev. John Williams, which had 
 fallen to his charge. || 
 
 But our Williams was not so occupied with the heavenly king- 
 dom as to forget that grand earthly empire that he would fain 
 establish. And yet, the establishing was very slow. The New 
 York Indians came in but scant numbers; and those already 
 settled, disaffected by his broken promises and his want of earnest- 
 ness for their spiritual welfare, withdrew their confidence. 
 
 In 1827, the Menominees showed their opposition to him by 
 concluding a treaty with the United States in which they ignored 
 almost entirely, any rights formerly given by them to the New 
 York Indians. If ill-faith be imputed to both of these contracting 
 parties, much justification can be alleged. The arrivals of Indians 
 from New York had been so few, and promised in the future to be 
 
 * Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, iii, 2738. 
 
 t Current issue of Green Bay Oazette; same paper, issue of July 22, 1886. 
 t Green Bay Gazette, July 22, 1886. § Davidson's Unnamed Wis., 65. 
 II Ellis' Bleazer WiUiams. — Wisconsin Historical CoUeotions, viii, 324. 
 
Not the Dauphin of France 27 
 
 so few, that it was not fair to the rapidly growing West to concede 
 to those few an imperial territory. It was poor policy to yield in 
 perpetuity to a few Oneidas, Stockbridges, Brothertowns, Munsees, 
 a piece of territory equal to about half of the State of Wisconsin.* 
 The details of much negotiation and of much heart - buminc 
 resulting from this treaty are immaterial here. The conclusion 
 was reached in 1838, when, as the consequence of large sales made 
 to the government by the Menominees and Winnebagoes and as the 
 consequence of the inrush of white settlers to purchase these sold 
 lands, the New York Indians were localized in insignificant and 
 meagre sections along Duck Creek, west of the lower Fox River.+ 
 This was the end of the scheme of ambition and temporal sov- 
 ereignty which for almost a score of years Eleazer Williams had 
 nourished and fostered. The dusky empire had disintegrated, the 
 different bands, discordant and hostile, had been confined in nar- 
 row paddocks, the tide of white civilization was rushiag in. No 
 longer a public character Eleazer had withdrawn from Green Bay 
 and was residing upon his wife's estate at Little Kaukaulin, there 
 to remain in. humble obscurity until a wilder dream of wider 
 empire should arouse his dormant hopes. 
 
 What Williams' standing was at Green Bay during his resi- 
 dence there is declared by John Y. Smith, a citizen of long stand- 
 ing, a man of great force of character, thorough probity, and 
 literary culture: J 
 
 "He was a fat, lazy, good-for-nothing Indian; but cunning,§ 
 crafty, fruitful in expedients to raise the wind and unscrupulous 
 about the means of accomplishiag it. During the last four or five 
 years of my acquaintance with him, I doubt whether there was a 
 man in Green Bay whose word commanded less confidence than 
 * Ellis' Eleazer Williams. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, viii, 341. 
 tibid, 343; Ellis' New York Indians.— Wis. Hist. Coll., ii, 445, 448. 
 Williams' views of the wrong done to the New York Indians are in Colton's 
 Tour of the American Lakes, i, 175. 
 J Smith's Eleazer Williams. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, vi, 332. 
 § Cunning is one of the earliest characteristics of the adult Williams 
 which the writer has observed, —August, 1830. — Mo Call's Journal. — Wis- 
 consin Historical Collections, xii, 185. 
 
28 Eleazer "Williams 
 
 that of Eleazer Williams. His character for dishonesty, trickery, 
 and falsehood became so notorious and scandalous that respectable 
 Episcopalians preferred charges against him to Bishop Onderdonk. 
 But as -Williams was located in the diocese of Wisconsin under 
 Bishop Kemper, the bishop of New York disclaimed jurisdiction 
 in the case; and, as Williams was there under a commission from 
 a society in New York, Bishop Kemper disclaimed jurisdiction 
 of the case, and in. consequence of these counter -disclaimers the 
 charges were never investigated." 
 
 It is not pleasant to perpetuate these characterizations, to recall 
 these misconducts of one long dead, but the truth of history is 
 involved and the claims of dauphinship for Eleazer Williams 
 depend upon his own personal statements. Candor, therefore, 
 compels us to say — and these pages ill-perform their mission if 
 they fail to show "that an obstinate persisting to act a false part 
 was exactly suitable to his character,"* that he abounded ia sly 
 cunning, was prone to tricks, apt to exaggerate, quick to invent, 
 utterly untruthful. 
 
 Notwithstanding Williams' permanent residence in Wisconsin, 
 he did not sever his connection with his eastern kin. In 1835, 
 he was in St. Regis securing evidence in order to obtain long- 
 delayed justice from the government of the United States, for his 
 father's services and sacrifices in the war of 1812. Three years 
 later, he was again in New York state and visited in Buffalo, 
 where and when he whispered his dauphinship into the ear of 
 George H. Haskins, the editor of the Buffalo Express. \ In the 
 fall of 1841, he was again at St.Regis and was visiting there 
 when the newspapers told of the trip which the Prince de JoinvQle 
 was about to make to the Mississippi by way of the lakes, the 
 Fox and Wisconsin rivers — that trip with a mention of which 
 this paper opened. 
 
 After the visit of the prince to Green Bay, in 1841, but little 
 in the life of Williams requires notice for several years. He was 
 almost entirely disassociated from the Indians but was much 
 
 * Used in Earn on Facts, N. Y., 1890, 435, referring to Arnold du Tilh. 
 ■ + Robertson's The Last of the Bourbon Story. — Putnam's Magazine, n.s. 
 ii, 96; Draper's Additional Notes. — Wisconsin Historical CoU., viii, 362. 
 
Not the Dauphin op France 29 
 
 occupied in pressing against the government claims growing out 
 of theii- removal to the western country. In 1846, the Society 
 for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Indians and others 
 in North America, appropriated money for his support as a mis- 
 sionary; but after two years tliis stipend was withdrawn, the 
 result not justifyiag its contiauance* In 1850, he went East to 
 proffer his services for the removal of the Seneca Indians from 
 Indian Territory to the upper waters of the Mississippi. His 
 offer was declined. Not returning again to his family, he took up 
 his residence at St. Regis where he commenced a school and where 
 he had some kind of a missionary appointment from the Diocesan 
 Society of New York and from the Boston Unitarian Society.t 
 Upon the recommendation of his neighbors, the Society for the 
 Propagation of the Gospel renewed its appropriation, but in 1853, 
 this was again withdrawn owing to his protracted absence from 
 duty.+ 
 
 Down to the fall of 1851, "Williams had been a secret pretender. 
 His first obtrusion of himself as a dauphin had been in private 
 ways, by personal interviews, by anonjrmous letter, by fictitious 
 signature to suggestions to newspapers, by artful acting when 
 visiting friends. A single illustration of his conduct must suffice 
 for many, ex wrw disce om/nes: 
 
 Dr. Vinton writes that in August, 1844, while he and Williams 
 were in the parlor of the residence of Mrs. 0. H. Perry at New- 
 port, the writer's attention was attracted by the gesticulations 
 and other antics of Williams who was examining a volume of 
 engravings, the names of which were on the reverse, and acci- 
 dently came upon a print of Simon, the dauphin's cruel jailer in 
 the Temple. Dr. Vinton says, "I saw Williams sitting upright 
 and stiff in his chair, his eyes fixed and wide open, his hands 
 clenched on the table, his whole frame shaking and trembling as 
 if a paralysis had seized him. . . Pointing to the wood -cut, he 
 said, 'That image has haunted me day and night, as long as I can 
 remember. 'Tis the horrid vision of my dreams; what is it? 
 Who is it?' " The leaf was turned and Simon's name was on the 
 
 * Huntoon's Eleazer WiUiams, 259. t Ibid, 260. 
 
 + Robertson's The Last of tlie Bourbon Story. — Putnam's Mag. ,n.s.,ii, 98. 
 
So Elbazer Williams 
 
 reverse.* From this incident those -who did homage to Williams 
 drew sure conclusions; but I have no doubt the scene was a very- 
 clever bit of play and if Dr. Vinton is not mistaken in the year, 
 WiUiams was engaged longer than has been believed in working 
 up his imposture. It should be added that Williams is credited 
 with the same theatrical piece of acting about six years later at 
 the residence of Professor Day of Northampton — there was 
 another picture of Simon, Williams greatly excited, and the ejacu- 
 lation, "Good God, I know that face, it. has haunted me through 
 life."t 
 
 Another way in which WilUams brought himself into notice 
 by the underground plan is exhibited by the following letter writ- 
 ten under a false name to a Mr. Reed of Buffalo in August, 1860 ; 
 
 "It so happened that I was at the Eagle Hotel in Philadelphia 
 when you and Mr. Williams (the dauphiu of France,) were there. 
 Curiosity, as well as having taken an interest in the history of 
 the unfortunate Prince, has led me to address you and ask you to 
 have the goodness to inform me if you are in posession of any 
 historical facts in relation to this wonderful man." 
 
 In the autumn of 1851, Williams made by chance the acquaint- 
 ance of the Rev. J. H. Hanson of New York. J Hanson had read 
 of the claims of Williams through a cunning letter which had 
 appeared in the New York Courier and Enquwer. Through 
 Hanson's energetic espousal, Eleazer was converted from a secret, 
 surreptitious pretender into an open vindicator of his royal posi- 
 tion. He became a genuine monarch, issued manifestoes, signed 
 the initials L. C. to his documents, received notes phrased "Your 
 Most Gracious Majesty," and promised his votaries passage to 
 France in a national ship when he should obtain his own.§ 
 
 It is diiEcult accurately to characterize Rev. Mr. Hanson as 
 the promoter of Williams and his claims. As the grandnephew 
 
 * Vinton's Louis XVII and E. Williams. — Putnam's Magazine, n.3.,ii,331. 
 
 t Huntoon'a Eleazer WiUiams, 263; Hanson's The Lost Prince, 354. 
 
 X Hanson's The Lost Prince, 336. 
 
 § Letter to author from George Sheldon of Deerfield, Mass., Apr. 6, 1896; 
 Draper's Additional Notes on Eleazer Williams. — Wis, Hist. CoU., viii, 369, 
 
Not the Dauphin of Feance 3l 
 
 of Oliver Goldsmith,* Hanson could well have been credulous 
 and simple-minded. But so much imposition was practised by- 
 Williams, so many marvelous tales he related, so many documents 
 he boasted to own yet failed to exhibit, so many discrepancies 
 are palpable in his Journal, so many statements unsubstantiated, 
 that the wonder is the utmost extreme of gullibility did not 
 become suspicious. 
 
 Whatever may have been Hanson's motive, he assumed vigor- 
 ously the promotion of the pretender. His first preserved printed 
 composition in behalf of Williams' dauphin claims was the article 
 "Have We a Bourbon Among Us?" in Putnam's Magazine, Peb- 
 rwxy, |1853. That magazine had published its initial number in 
 January, 1853, and, like the scriptural conies, it was a feeble folk. 
 What had manifestly been expected, if not intended, by the 
 publication of Hanson's article was immediately accomplished. 
 Twenty thousand names were added to the subscription list of 
 Putnam's.t In 1854, appeared "The Lost Prince," in which Han- 
 son amplifies and supplements what he, and other Williams wor- 
 shippers also, had printed in a fugitive manner. For two or three 
 years, the magazine and Williams basked in the sunshine of suc- 
 cess. Finally, however, as the speciousness of his claims and the 
 weakness of their supports became fully appreciated, the popular- 
 ity of Williams and the circulation of the magazine rapidly 
 declined. 
 
 He died August 28, 1858, in great poverty, sufiering from want 
 of attention and from the necessaries of life. He had dwelt 
 mostly alone in a neat cottage erected by friends subsequent to 
 the publications which excited so general an interest in 1853. 
 
 "His household presented an aspect of cheerless desolation 
 without a mitigating ray of comfort or a genial spark of home-light. 
 His neatly finished rooms had neither carpets, curtains, nor fur- 
 niture, save a scanty supply of broken chairs and invalid tables ; 
 boxes filled with books, the gifts of friends, lay stored away in cor- 
 ners; his dining -table, unmoved from week to week and covered 
 
 * Putnam's Mag., n.a., July, 1868, ii, 127. 
 t Huntoon's Eleazer Williams, 252. 
 
S2 Eleazee Williams 
 
 ■with the broken remains of former repasts and his pantry and 
 sleeping -room disordered and filthy, left upon the visitor an op- 
 pressive feeling of homeless solitude that it was impossible to efiace 
 from the memory."* 
 
 The occupant of this ill - kept abode, his family which he had 
 wilfully deserted, a thousand miles away, his hopes and ambitions 
 turned to ashes, crept scant honored into a lonely grave. 
 
 Four observations will conclude this writing : 
 
 First : Mention has been made of the attempts to secure from 
 the government of the United States indemnity for the losses sus- 
 tained by Thomas Williams in the war of 1812. Not until the 
 death of Thomas and his widow was the proper reparation made; 
 and in doing this justice, the government has also done justice to 
 the truth of history. On April 17, 1858, the House Committee 
 on Military Afiairs reported on a claim which it designated as the 
 claim of "Eleazer Williams, heir of Thomas Williams.'' This 
 report found as facts Thomas Williams' distinguished and unre- 
 compensed military services and his great pecuniary sacrifices. 
 The report found also his death and the death of his widow and 
 then found that she left "as her sole heir and devisee her son, 
 the Rev. Eleazer Williams, who is likewise the sole surviving son 
 and heir of Thomas Williams.'' Representative Pendleton of 
 Ohio, an acute and sagacious lawyer, reported these findings and 
 stated that they were "abundantly proven by the evidence. "+ 
 And so, within five months of his death, Eleazer Williams was 
 "abundantly proven," by evidence preserved in the archives at 
 Washington, the son — not of Louis XVI; the heir — not of 
 France, but the son and heir of the Caughnawaga Indians, Thomas 
 and Mary Ann Williams, whose paternity for twenty years he 
 had disowned but whose heritage he did not hesitate to accept. 
 
 Second : It is fair to Williams to remark that however much 
 he might beguile others he did not deceive himself His private 
 letters written, and his intimate conversations spoken, after the 
 Join ville incident of 1841, disclose this. For an instance : In the 
 
 * Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, introduction, 13. 
 
 t Rep. 303, 35th Cong., 1st Session. 
 
Not the Dauphin of France 33 
 
 library of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin is a completed 
 draft of a letter written by him to Rev. Joshua Leavitt at Boston. 
 Its date is March 17, 1848, nearly seven years after the alleged 
 interview of the Prince de Joinville and Williams at the Astor 
 House in Green Bay. The letter to Leavitt begins thus : 
 
 "I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your favour 
 of the 10th of Febr'y, accompanied with a "Biographical memoir" 
 of the Rev. John Williams, by Dr. S. W. Williams of Deerfield, 
 for which you will please to accept my sincere thanks. As for 
 WiUiams's Genealogy, you may expect that a Gentleman will call 
 upon you before long for the same. 
 
 "The life or memoir of Eunice Williams, the captive, or my great- 
 gramdmother, by Mr. Sailville in MS. were left by me when last 
 in Boston with the Rev. Mr. Lothrop of the Brattle St. Church 
 with a view of publication after its language having been raised 
 and its arrangements remodelled. I have written to the Gentle- 
 man but no answer. The friends on Connecticut river have been 
 looking out for more than two years of its publication, and now 
 have actually become clamorous about this matter."* 
 
 Another incident or two to show that Eleazer Williams was 
 not deceived but was acting: After the appearance of "The Lost 
 Prince," Williams happened to meet ia Baltimore his friend 
 Charles D. Robinson, editor of the Green Bay Gazette. The latter 
 who knew Williams' character said when referring to the book, 
 "I do not believe there is a word of truth in it." Williams broke 
 into a hearty laugh and retorted "Nor do I either." So, meeting 
 his life-long friend Alexander Grignon, of Green Bay, Williams 
 asked him if he had read anything about the dauphin matter. 
 "Yes, I have," was the reply with a laugh and a manner evincing 
 his total disbelief of the story. "It is not me," explained 
 
 * The itaHcs are the author'a. Williams has given his exact relationship 
 to Eunice Williams as this genealogical table shows : 
 Rev. John WiUiams of De erfield= Eunice Mather. 
 
 Eunice Williams, the captive. 
 S arah = an Indian. 
 ThSaa'williamsjMary Ann Rice. 
 Eleazer WiUiama. 
 
34 Eleazer Williams 
 
 Williams with a disregard of grammar that would have made the 
 real dauphin blush, "It is not me; they wanted it so and I don't 
 care."* Had he particularized whom he meant by "they," it may 
 well be conjectured that the true inwardness of the deception as 
 published by Hanson and connived at by Eleazer Williams, would 
 have been disclosed. 
 
 Third: It would be interesting if we knew just when and just 
 why Williams exploited his claim to royal lineage. No certain 
 answer can be given. Despite his alleged surprise at the revela- 
 tion by Joinville in 1841, it is known that years before this, he 
 had whispered the same pretentions. The prince's visit furnished 
 him a splendid opportunity to advance these pretentions, using 
 the visit as a handle. Moreover, he had abundant examples set 
 him abroad. He enjoyed the privilege, not accorded to us, of 
 living in an age that produced dauphins. Men far less acute and 
 sly than he, had palmed themselves upon the public as the heir of 
 St. Louis, had published books asserting their claims, had been 
 the objects of attention, solicitude and anxiety to the daughter of 
 the martyr-king. The Duchesse d'AngoulSme once wrotef that 
 twenty-seven different persons had written to her, each declaring 
 that he was her genuine brother. While dauphin meteors had 
 been shooting athwart the European firmament, and shining with 
 tinsel lustre, should not one pretender glitter and stream in the 
 western horizon'! Should not Eleazer Williams be that pretender? 
 
 Fourth: It must have been observed that this paper has con- 
 sidered the dauphin pretensions of Williams entirely from the 
 American standpoint. Granted that certain actions of the French 
 government in 1795, granted that certain actions of the restored 
 Bourbon kings in 1816, indicated a doubt of the death of young 
 Louis in the Temple tower; granted that the frail prince did not, 
 as a matter of history, die in 1795; that his escape was accom- 
 plished; that he gained safe asylum in Italy, in Austria, in Eng- 
 land, in America even; still Eleazer Williams was not he. 
 Hervagault, Mathurin Bruneau, Persat, Fontolive, Meves, Rich- 
 
 * Draper's Additional Notes. — Wisconsin Historical Collections, viii, 367, 
 + Chantelauze's Louis XVII, Paris, 1895, is. 
 
Not the Dauphin of E'eance 3S 
 
 emont, NaundorflF, any one of the foreign brood of Bourbonic 
 upstarts, had better reason to be identified as that escaped scion 
 of unhappy majesty than the half-breed Iroquois whose lines have 
 fallen unto us in this paper, who was bom more than three years 
 later than young Louis, at a place removed three thousaad miles 
 from the rock of young Louis' cradle, of a parentage not Capetian 
 and Austrian, but Mohawk and Massachusetts, who never elbowed 
 royalty save on Lake Michigan and at Green Bay and who never 
 heard the eastern wash of the Atlantic waves. 
 
 William W. Wight. 
 
m ^. />*S5^ M.i>.:^^m