USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 71
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of Wisconsin and the bishop of New York. For a quarter of a century Mr. Williams spent most of his time at Washington, haunting the com- mittee rooms of Congress and departmental offices, where he was engaged in prosecuting claims for the Indians and for himself against the govern- ment. While he did obtain the allowance of some of these, his success was not large, and his expenses had to come out of the awards, so that the Indians, realizing little or nothing, came to doubt his fidelity. He had lands and other property of his own, but Washington life not only made him poorer in material respects, but is said also to have affected his ministerial devotion.
Having lost his standing with the Indians at Green Bay, he returned East in 1850, locating at St. Regis or Hogansburgh, and opening a school there for Indian children. He had married a French woman at Green Bay, a relative of Marshal Jourdan, one of Napoleon's generals, and had one son. These remained in the West, and it does not appear that Mr. Williams ever had further intimate association with them. He had a claim before the Legislature of Vermont, as well as those before the Congress of the United States, and these he continued to agitate and prosecute. He obtained again a missionary appointment, secured many subscriptions in aid of his work at St. Regis and Hogansburgh, and is said by some of his biographers to have actually built a church at the latter place with money obtained from England. This is manifestly incorrect, however, because Hogansburgh has never had but two Epis- copalian church edifices. The first of these, a barn-like structure, and now used as a barn, was built through the efforts of William Hogan about 1834, or something like fifteen years prior to Mr. Williams's final abandonment of work in Wisconsin and his return permanently to New York. This building was never finished, and was but rarely used for purposes of worship. The journal of the diocese of New York for 1835 carries the report that Rev. Mr. Pardee from Malone officiated in a school house at Hogansburgh in 1834, and that Mr. Hogan had at that time erected at his own expense a church edifice there, which it was expected would be finished the next year; but the same record shows that in 1835 little work had been done on the building. In 1836 Mr. Pardee, after having again visited Hogansburgh, reported that Eleazer Williams had been teaching Indian children during the year at St. Regis, and that he had usually held services on Sunday. The other edifice is the present church, which was not erected until some fifteen years after Mr. Williams's death.
Towards the end of Mr. Williams's life he was reduced to actual des-
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titution, but assistance was later extended to him, and he was made more comfortable.
In February, 1853, there was published in Putnam's Magazine a care- fully prepared article by Rev. John H. Hanson, an Episcopal clergyman who had formerly been located at Waddington, and was then established in New York city, which startled the entire country. It purported to be an absolute and incontrovertible demonstration that Eleazer Williams was in fact a Bourbon, and none other than the lost Dauphin. Mr. Hanson was undoubtedly sincere in the conviction that such was the truth, and his labors in the case, continued zealously until his death in 1855, were everywhere recognized as having had no selfish or ulterior motive, and to have been undertaken solely to establish what he believed to be a just claim and to right a grave wrong. Granted that Mr. Williams told Mr. Hanson only the truth as he himself knew it, and all of the truth, it is exceedingly difficult to escape acceptance of Mr. Hanson's conclusions and demonstrations. But did Mr. Williams deal frankly and honestly at all points with Mr. Hanson ? We can at least examine the evidence, leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions.
It is not practicable within the limits of this sketch to follow Mr. Hanson's magazine articles and the book on the subject which he subse- quently published under the title of "The Lost Prince," in all of their details, or even to set forth fully his arguments, but the story may be summarized briefly :
In 1851 Mr. Hanson, having previously seen a short paragraph in the newspapers to the effect that Mr. Williams was Louis XVII., met Mr. Williams by chance on a railway train and from a point in the vicinity of Malone journeyed with him as far as Burlington, Vt. From the moment of meeting they discussed almost uninterruptedly the strange story, Mr. Williams declaring that though the subject was painful to him, he would nevertheless give Mr. Hanson such information as he possessed. Mr. Williams stated that, of his own recollection, he knew nothing what- ever of his life in earliest years, his mind having been a blank to him until he was thirteen or fourteen years of age, when he fell or dived from a high rock at Lake George, cutting a deep gash in his head and rendering him unconscious. When consciousness was recovered, he said that intelligence was restored, and that thereafter, though still unable to recall anything of his early youth definitely, he did have dim recol- lections and vague impressions suggestive of very different conditions and surroundings from those that then environed him. Among these, he said, were recollections of lying on a carpet with his head leaning against the
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silk dress of a lady, of being in a room where there were persons dressed magnificently, and of seeing troops exercising in a garden. Again, one witness for him in Mr. Hanson's story told that upon chancing upon a portrait of Simon the cobbler Mr. Williams exclaimed: " Good God ! I know that face. It has haunted me through life."
Mr. Williams told Mr. Hanson in this first interview, en route to Burlington, that the first time that he had ever had reason to suppose himself to be of other than of Indian origin, at least in part, was in 1841, when Prince de Joinville, son of Louis Philippe, " Citizen King" of France, sought him out in the West, after having made inquiries in New York concerning him, and, under pledge of secrecy, told him that he was the Dauphin, and endeavored to induce him to renounce his claims or rights as such. According to Mr. Williams, the revelation utterly astounded him, and paralyzed his powers of reflection. He thus gave the matter little consideration except in its amazing aspect, and neglected for years to attempt in any way to probe the representation. It was not until 1848 that he even questioned his reputed Indian mother as to whether he was in fact her son, when, as he claimed, the priests had tampered with her, and her lips were sealed. He claimed also to have learned afterward at St. Regis that the priests had argued with the woman, a devout Catholic, that if he, a Protestant, should come to the throne of France he might do incalculable injury to the Church and be " the ruin of many souls." He did discover, however, that the church register at Caughnawaga, while showing the birth and baptism of each of his eleven reputed brothers and sisters, following closely upon each other "at regular intervals of two years between each," did not contain any record of his own birth or baptism --- a most remarkable omission in a Catholic parish if he had in truth been born and baptised there.
Mr. Williams further told Mr. Hanson that a Frenchman named Belanger had died in New Orleans in 1848, and confessed on his death- bed that he had brought the Dauphin to this country, and placed him among the Indians in the northern part of New York. This story ran that Belanger had taken a solemn oath of secrecy, but that the altered circumstances of the times, and the near approach of death, induced him to break silence.
The next link in the chain of identity of Williams with the Dauphin, as furnished by himself to Mr. Hanson, was derived from a Frenchman, and was to the effect that while Simon was the Dauphin's keeper he became enraged with him, and, snatching a towel, drew the nail on
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which it hung with it, and struck the child twice in the face, inflicting two wounds, one over the left eye and the other on the right side of the nose, which left scars. Mr. Williams certainly carried scars which as to location and appearance corresponded to those that the Dauphin was claimed to have had.
Further, the autopsy upon the child who did die in the Temple, and was represented to have been the Dauphin, showed that he had died of scrofula, and that the disease was especially marked at the knees. Mr. Williams averred to Mr. Hanson that his own knces were "eaten up with scrofnla." He called attention also to his alleged resemblance to Louis XVIII. and to the Bourbon family in general as further confirm- ing the idea of his royal descent.
On the boat, just before reaching Burlington, Mr. Williams exhibited to Mr. Hanson a dress of magnificent but somewhat faded brocade silk which had been given to him by a lady who brought it from France, and who, believing Mr. Williams to be the Dauphin, considered him the rightful owner because the robe had been Marie Antoinette's. It had been taken apart, and consisted of a skirt, back piece, stomacher, and train ten or twelve feet in length.
Mr. Hanson's own description of Mr. Williams's appearance is that he had no trace, however slight, of the Indian about him, except that his manner of talking reminded one of an Indian, and he had the habit of shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating like one. But he had " the port and presence of an European gentleman of high rank: a nameless something that I never saw but in persons accustomed to command; a long Austrian lip, the expression of which is of exceeding sweetness when in repose; full fleshy cheeks, but not high cheek bones; dark, bright, merry eyes of hazel hue; graceful, well formed neck; strong, muscular limbs, indicating health and great activity ; small hands and feet; and dark hair, sprinkled with gray, as fine in texture as silk." A daguerreo- type taken in 1852 shows Mr. Williams smooth-shaven, but another description of him, quoted by Mr. Hanson, refers to his beard as heavy, and, describing his so-called Hapsburg or protruding lips, says that they are never found in the American aborigines.
After this interview with Mr. Williams Mr. Hanson continuel to tale an active interest in the matter, repeating Mr. Williams's representation to many people, and receiving additional information from other sources. Among these latter was Dr. J. W. Francis, of New York, sole surviving member of a dinner party in New York city in 1818, at which Monsieur Genet, then the French minister to the United States, had also been a guest. Dr. Francis said that the conversation had turned upon the sub-
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ject of the Dauphin, when Monsieur Genet remarked: "The Dauphin of France is not dead, but was brought to America "- adding that he believed him to be then in Western New York. ( In fact, Mr. Williams was at that time at Oneida.) Monsieur Genet further said that two French noblemen had been in this country in 1817. conferring with Le Ray de Chaumont, and that there was reason to suppose that their errand had some reference to the Dauphin. Chaumont lived in Jefferson county for years, and Mr. Hanson was strongly of the opinion (though without demonstrating at all clearly that he had good grounds for it) that his presence there was to observe Mr. Williams and to report to France concerning him.
Mr. Hanson became convinced also that Eleazer Williams's schooling at Long Meadow, Mass., had been paid through a mysterious channel, which he conjectured would eventually be traced to Belanger. He makes a good deal of the point that, according to his belief, the education of Eleazer was paid for differently and by parties other than those who met the cost of the brother's schooling.
In December, 1852, Mr. Williams visited Mr. Hanson twice in New York city, and repeated and amplified the story already recited. In this second recital Mr. Williams stated that at Green Bay in 1841 Prince de Joinville laid before him a parchment, with wax, pen and ink and a governmental seal of France used under the old monarchy - the document on parchment being written in French and English in parallel columns, and the purport of which "was a solemn abdication of the crown of France in favor of Louis Philippe, by Charles Louis, the son of Louis XVI., who was styled Louis XVII., king of France and Navarre, with all accompanying names and titles of honor according to the old French monarchy, together with a minute specification in legal phraseology of the conditions and considerations and provisos upon which the abdication was made. These conditions were, in brief, that a princely establishment would be secured to me either in this country or in France, at my option, and that Louis Philippe would pledge himself on his part to secure the restoration, or an equivalent, of all the private property of the royal family rightfully belonging to me, which had been confiscated by France during the revolution, or in any way got into other hands.". The proposition so staggered Mr. Williams that it did not occur to him to keep the document, or even to make a copy of it, for which the Prince de Joinville's absence from the room from time to time afforded opportunity ; but he was so wholly absorbed, as he told Mr. Hanson, with the question of acceptance or rejection that he thought
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of nothing else. At length he announced to the prince that "though I am in poverty and exile I will not sacrifice my honor." Indignant and stormy protest and altercation followed, but when Mr. Williams reminded the prince that upon his own statement he was the superior the prince accepted the rebuke meekly and at once assumed a respectful and defer- ential manner. They finally parted for the day with request by the prince that Mr. Williams reconsider. The next day the prince renewed the proposition, which was again declined.
Unfortunately this interview and negotiation had no witness other than the Prince de Joinville and Mr. Williams, whose version of it is as here recited. We shall see further on the character given to it by the prince.
Mr. Williams informed Mr. Hanson that he met Chaumont in 1820 or 1821, and was then told by him that a member of the royal family of France was in this country.
Mr. Hanson gives credence to reported special efforts made by emi- nent French prelates in Boston and Montreal to persuade Mr. Williams to renounce Protestantism and take orders in the Catholic Church, these prelates having been known to be convinced that the Dauphin was in the United States. Mr. Hanson disbelieves that they would have been so much concerned to win over Mr. Williams if they had deemed him to be only an ordinary person, or an Indian or a " breed."
Mr. Hanson refers to correspondence which Mr. Williams claimed to have had with French cardinals and bishops, with Louis Philippe him- self, and with other persons of rank and consequence in France, but with regretful admission that most of the letters related only to historical matters, and that all of them had been lost or burned.
One more incident told by Mr. Williams remains to be related. In 1799 Thomas Williams went from Caughnawaga, as usual, to hunt in the vicinity of Lake George, and while encamped there was visited by two strange gentlemen, one of whom was a Frenchman who sought an interview with Eleazer, embraced him tenderly, kissed him, and wept over him - finally examining his feet, ankles and knees closely, and presenting him with a piece of gold. Eleazer could not understand what the gentleman said, because he spoke in French, but his subsequent conjecture was that the man must have been Belanger.
Shortly afterward, upon their return to Caughnawaga, there was a caller at night at the Williams home. Lying in bed, Eleazer heard the conversation, which he told Mr. Hanson was a discussion between the caller and his reputed father and mother whether the latter would per- mit some of their boys to go to Long Meadow, Mass., to be educated. The
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mother would not hear to it at first, but at length consented that " the strange boy " (Eleazer) might go, but that she would not be separated from John. It was, however, arranged ultimately that both John and Eleazer should go. Mr. Williams remembered also having overheard a conversation in Albany between Thomas Williams and an old Indian trader, in which the latter referred to his having been at Lake George when Eleazer was brought there in 1295 by a stranger, and in which conversation the trader said that the boy was not an Indian.
Two or three weeks after the interview of Mr. Williams with Mr. Hanson the substance of which has here been stated, Mr. Williams sub- mitted his journal (which he had kept since 1808) to Mr. Hanson, and the latter quotes at length from it concerning the Prince de Joinville's negotiation with Mr. Williams at Green Bay. The journal account and Mr. Williams's oral statement about it are substantially identical.
Mr. Hanson says : " Mr. Williams has never tried to make capital of his story," and, again, that Mr. Williams's knee had been examined by himself in the presence of two physicians, and that it had the deep indented scars of a scrofulous tumor ; the disease must have been severe, as the leg down to the instep was blackened with it.
Mr. Hanson emphasizes that at the age of ten years the Dauphin had been reduced to idiocy by ill treament, and that Eleazer was idiotic at the age of thirteen or fourteen.
In the April Putnam's of the same year Mr. Hanson returned to the subject, making an impressive attempt to demonstrate that the Dauphin did not die in the prison of the Temple. Desault, who Mr. Hanson says was the most celebrated surgeon of his time, and incapable of deception or misrepresentation, had attended the Dauphin in early May, 1195, and is quoted by Mr. Hanson as having declared that scrofula had scarcely imprinted its seal on the constitution of the Dauphin at that time, whereas the report of the autopsy of a month later pronounced the disease to have long existed and to have been deep seated. On this point alone does Mr. Hanson seem to show inconsistency, having in his previous article dwelt upon the marked evidence afforded by examina- tion of Mr. Williams's person of his having suffered severely from scrofula, while now he presents the findings of three physicians who. at the request of Mr. Hanson, had examined Mr. Williams critically, and were agreed that while they found that he bore all of the scars and markings which Desault had described as found by him on the person of the Dauphin. these were apparently not due to the ravages of scrofula, but to bodily severities inflicted or consequent upon a protracted con- finement in impure or deteriorated air, restricted or bad diet, and other
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deprivations, and to incised wounds. In view of Mr. Hanson's extreme care in all other phases of his presentation of the case, it seems inex- plicable that in February he should have undertaken to strengthen the claim of identity upon the basis of the report of the autopsy, and two months later should shift the argument to make it fit Desault's findings and disagree with the autopsy.
In the April article Mr. Hanson includes the reply made by the secretary of the Prince de Joinville to Mr. Williams's version of the Green Bay interview, which was in effect a flat denial. The prince's secretary declared that the interview related solely to historical incidents and events relative to French discoveries and movements in America, and his letter implies that the meeting between the two was by chance only. There is abundant evidence altogether outside of statements made by Mr. Williams that, instead of having been accidental, the meeting had been deliberately sought by the Prince de Joinville and fully planned by him. Mr. Hanson seized upon this error or falsehood in the secre- tary's communication, and, upon the maxim of false in one false in all. insisted that the representation that the interview had to do only with American historical matters is to be discredited, and that Mr. Williams is to be regarded as the more trustworthy witness relative to what actually transpired. Whether the secretary was not fully informed, whether his implication as to the meeting having been accidental was merely inadvertent, or whether in superserviceable zeal he purposely exceeded the hounds of truth in this regard, can not be known, because neither he nor the Prince de Joinville ever alluded to the matter again publicly. In any case, there is and was no competent witness other than the prince and Mr. Williams to what passed between them at Green Bay. The issue of veracity is thus squarely between these two, with only the intrinsic probabilities to aid any one in judging between them. As bearing upon this point, it is admitted that the Prince de Joinville bore a high reputation, and it is to be remembered also that Mr. Wil- liams had acquired a wide reputation of being particularly well informed concerning the labors and movements of early French explorers and missionaries, and as an authority on the subject. Was it a mere incident of the interview, or is it to be thought a confirmation of the prince's characterization of it, that very soon after his departure from Green Bay Mr. Williams wrote to him at New York, apparently in fulfillment of a promise, giving information about La Salle and Charlevoix, while the prince sent to Mr. Williams, also by prearrangement, certain books relating to similar matters ?
It would be unfair to fail to state that trustworthy witnesses testified
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that members of the prince's retinue were manifestly greatly impressed by Mr. Williams's appearance, and that the bearing of the prince him- self in Mr. Williams's presence suggested that he deemed him to deserve most respectful consideration, if not genuine deference.
What is the other side of the case?
Rev. Charles F. Robertson was rector of St. Mark's Church, Malone, a half century ago, and was administrator of Eleazer Williams's estate, which was pitifully small except in manuscripts. The appraisal on file in the office of the surrogate of Franklin county valued it at $119.75, and the accounting showed that it realized $162.34. Books, pamphlets, etc., comprised $76.87 of the total, and household effects almost all of the remainder, except for one " silk embroidered robe said to have been worn by Marie Antoinette, $10." Nearly every article enumerated is described as " old," and a number of them as " cracked " or " broken." Everything was apparently of the commonest sort, hardly more or better, except in books, than the probable contents of the poorest hovel on the St. Regis reservation to-day. Apart from the books, which sold for $76.87, the only distinctive articles in the lot were "one plate of Louis XVI. and family," valued at fifty cents; " tin box with journal and other manuscripts," which brought three dollars; and eight boxes of old manuscripts, which brought $19.51. Eight articles of britannia table ware are all that suggest that formerly Mr. Williams's circum- stances and style of living may have been more pretentious. The debts, due to Alfred Fulton and Samuel Barlow of Hogansburgh, amounted to. $228.52, and the expenses of administration were $56.23, leaving $106.11 to be divided pro rata between the creditors. The papers show that Mrs. Williams of Green Bay, Wis., was dead, and that the only heir was the son, John.
Mr. Robertson became the bishop of the diocese of Missouri at about this time, and removed to St. Louis. He was a man of engaging per- sonality, of brilliant mind, and fine literary accomplishments. In 1868 he published in Putnam's Magazine an article, which while hardly expressing an opinion of the writer except by the implication of its title, viz., " The Last of the Bourbon Story," must yet, as it seems to me, carry conviction to any unprejudiced mind that there is not the slightest reasonable ground for belief that Mr. Williams was the lost Dauphin. Almost everything that Mr. Robertson set forth as having a bearing on this point was derived from Mr. Williams's own original papers.
While it is true that the church records at Caughnawaga do not show the birth and baptism of Eleazer Williams, the record there is
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otherwise not as represented by Mr. Williams to Mr. Hanson. That is, it does not show births in the family regularly every two years. On the contrary, it gives no Williams birth at all between 1786 and 1791, an interval quite as remarkable, in view of the regularity of births in other periods, as the church omission concerning Eleazer. In this con- nection, it is well perhaps to note that a Mr. Williams of Roxbury, Mass., who says that his grandfather knew Eleazer Williams well, wrote to The Nation in 1894 that this grandfather told him that Rev. Father Marcoux explained to him at Caughnawaga in 1851 that the records of the mission there were incomplete, and that they contained nothing as to children who had been born outside of the parish. Mr. Williams's letter to The Nation stated further that in 1851 an investigation had been had at Caughnawaga concerning the birth of Eleazer before a notary named McNab, who could himself speak the Indian language, and who examined the witnesses separately and alone, so that no one of them knew the story that another had told. Mr. Williams states, on the authority of his grandfather, that two of these witnesses testified that they had personally been present at the birth of Eleazer, which they said occurred at Lake George, and one testified that the scars on his knees and legs were from wounds sustained in his fall from a high rock at Lake George. The tale continues that when Mr. McNab read the depositions to Eleazer's mother she cried, and said that though she had known that Eleazer had done many bad things she had not thought that he would deny his own mother.
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