The Yazoo City weekly Whig. (Yazoo City, Miss.) 18??-1855, 1853-03-04
The DaupIain of France.

WHO may DC dDEodus
The DaupIlin Of France.
No one can read the romantic9ale published
in the last number of Putnm's Monthlyrela-
tive tothe alledged identity of the Rev. Flea
Ear Williams, of New York, with the unfor-
innate Dauphfn Of the revolutionary history
of France, without being struck with how
much stranger than fiction, is truth, if that
tale be true; or how prone mans nature is to
deceit and falsehood, if it be false.
For an aged, unpretending missionary,
who has spent almost alife time in preaching
the gospel to a half-cfyilized remnant Of
Indians, and in ministering to their intellec-
ual nourishment; with but little to gain per-
sonally from a falsehood. except notoriety;
one whose life has been that Of the consist
ent christian; the quiet, unostentatious. self
sacrificing minister Of the cross-for him to
concoct tale more romantiewthan novel
writer's have imagined, or seeking
paragraphists have dreame Itch we
would alone look for in one nurtured in vice,
and educated to be felon. But If the tale
be true; il that humble missionary speaks
as he really believes; if he has no lie in his
mouth; if the Prince de Joinville did indeed
make those revelations to him in 1841,
which he affirms were made, then how
wonderful his career! History may be ran
sacked in vain for theme more suggestive,
or for lot in life so strangel
Born in 1895, the third child of the un-
fortunate Louis XVI, the loved son of
Marie Antoinette, than whom, in words of
poetic oratory, "there never was on this orb,
which she scarcely seemed to touch. amore
delightful vision" the lineal he Henry
Of Navarro and of Hugh Cape blood Of
France flows in that missiQA4ty's veins.
Separated from his parents before he could
signed to the care of a jailor, treated
with an inhumanlty that finds hardly a
parallel elsewhere, with cold, hunger, wake
fulness and cruelty as the companions Of his
boYish hours, holost The reason that God
hail given him, and idiocy marked him for
its own. But though an idiot boy, he was
still Louis XVII, and King of France.
Another turn inthe wheel of fortune sees
his iailor excel and decree for his own
Punishment from his native land. This was
in Decembers1794. On the 9th of June
1875, he is reported to have died ofscorfula
But.ifthe pul ed romance be true, the
scene did not lose. The person who
had the custo The Dauphin after the
death ofthe ja led from France tosecure
his personal salety. He then took the boy
with him; he went to Holland, then to Eng
land, then to America, where he deposited
him with the Indians in the State of New
York; then to Louisiana, where under a
changed name, he lived, andwhere he died
in 1913; having first revealed upon his
death bed the important secret, that the
Dauphin of France did not. die 1895, but
was brought by him away from France. and
left with Indians in the Northern part ofthe
State of New York.
The boy grew up among the Indians
what he was when placed in their charge,
an idiot. When about fourteen years old,
he elambered with the fearlessness of idiocy
to the top of high rock overhanging Lake
George, and fell head foremost into its wa
tiers. He was takenup insensible and laid
in hut. He was restored to Consciousness,
and to use his own simple language,
There was the blue sky, there were the
was the first I knew of life
The plunge and the shock broke the
framework Of idiocy which confined his
Intellect, and restored his brain to its ordin-
arY power, but gave him no memory of the
past. The youth of fourteen commenced
life anew, an infant in experience and in
knowledge, with nought save perhaps an oc-
casional dreamy glimmering Of the past, to
remind himof The scenes of boyhood,
The reputed parent of the boy was one
Thomas Williams, an Iroquos Indian
through his father. but on his mothers
side descendantfrom the Rev'd John Will
Hams, Of Deerfeld, Mass, who had been
captured by the Indians in 1904. Thomas
Williams married full blooded Indian wo-
man. Their children besides EIeazar, were
eleven III number. Eleazar was educated
at "a school in Massachusetts, where his
board and tuition were paid every six months
with q promptness and attention not usally
characteristic Of an Indian parent. In 1919.
although twenty seven years old, he was
still at his studies. During the late war,
he was employed as q confidential agent Of
the government; was at all the battles Of
Plattsburg, and was wounded. AT that
period his attention was strongly drawn to
Tie Episcopal Church. and from 1916 to
1929, he acted as lay reader to the In
dians at Oneida. In the latter year, with
about halfthe tribe, he moved to Green Bay,
and vas ordained ID 1926 By Bishop Hobart.
Tn j 893 he had married Miss Jourdan, Of
Green Bay, q relation Of Marshal Jourdan.
one Of Napoleon. S officers BIZ whom he had
two daughters and ! son che latter only now
living
From that time the humble missioary has
labored. and still labors. in imparting to The
poor Indian temporal and spiritual eduea-