The Green Forest tribune., 1915-11-26
NOT FRENCH DAUPHiN
CLAIM OF ELEAZAR WILLIAMS
 HAS BEEN DESTROYED.
Romantic Story That for Time Had Many Believers Is Now Almost Universally Acknowledged
 to Be Fiction.

Full of romance though the history | of Wisconsin is, it contains nc story more strange or fanciful than that o1 Eleazar Williams, the mysterious mis
 sionary of the Green Bay Indians, who some threescore years ago startled Americans by his claim to being the lost dauphin of France. To Green Bay, the historic fur-trade center once the seat of the French regime in Wisconsin, this tale adds new touch of color and picturesqueness.
 The one event of the French Reign of Terror" that created the profound est impression upon the popular mind of the time was the execution of the Bourbon monarch, Louis XVI and his unhappy queen, Marie Antoinette. The son of the royal pair, the dauphin of France, then lad of eight. was spared the guillotine, but was held for two years a lonely prisoner in the tower of the Temple. In 1795, accord ing to history, he died there. the re- suit of i'll treatment and neglect on the part of inhuman jailers. Even at the time of his death, however, rumors were current that he had escaped. Ad- herents of the Bourbons, it was said, had spirited the young prince away, and had substituted in his place a child of humble origin, which had suf- fered martyrdom in silence until re- lieved by death
 In 1S49 Eleazar Williams, then man of over sixty years of age, an nounced from the wilds of northern Wisconsin that he was the lost dau- phin, that he was Louis XVII, that he was the hereditary king of the French. The story that he told was a marvel ous one. The friends who had rescued him from the Temple had carried him to North America, where they had left him in charge of worthy Indian fam fly of the St. Regis tribe of Canada. At first his mind had been a blank, the result of ill usage, but later he had happily recovered his faculties. In 1S41, Prince de Joinville, son of the reigning French king, Louis Philippe, while on a trip through the new world, had secretly visited him, and attempt ed to bribe him, with a promise of splendid establishment, to abdicate the crown of France. This he had scornfully rejected, for though in poverty and in exile, he would not sacrifice his honor"
 Williams story, publis'9d broad cast in the United Statesi dxFrance, was believed by thousands. ssympa- thetic journalists in all parts of North America took it up, and several we'll known volumes were written with it as background. More critical stu dents, however, denounced the entire tale as fiction.
 Williams actual life, though in reality romantic enough, was far from identifying him with the royal throne of France. He was of mixed white and Indian blood, his grand mother having been carried captive as a child from the famous Deerfield, Massachusetts, massacre, to Canada, where she had later married among her captors. Her grandson, the sub- ject of our sketch, had served the Americans as spy during the war of 1912, and afterward lived among his tribesmen, first as a Catholic, then as a Congregationalist, and later as an Episcopalian missionary Coming to Wisconsin in 1921, he was instru- n a in hr,ir1 cyir, tn hO hn1 Green Bay, from New York, numbers of Oneida, Stockbridge Brothertown and Munsee Indians He apparently dreamed of establishing in the North west new Christianized confederacy, with himself as it's dictator. He was an intelligent and ambitious charac- ter, but eccentric, untruthful and self centered. Above all, he was an in- veterate poseur.
 When, in 1S4S, this interesting in- diyidual set up his claim to the throne of France, his circumstantial story, his physical resemblance to the Bour- bon family and the scars and birth marks which he exhibited upon his body convinced many of his sincerity. Those who knew him best, however, either laughed him to scorn or indig- nantly repudiated him. Even his In dian mother, whom he denied, de- nounced him as bad and untruthful man. Needless to say, he never as cended the French throne, and in 1858, died in poverty and neglect. Many of his sermons and papers are pre-. served in the collections of the Wis consin Historical society.