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Eleazsr Yiiillians-His Foreroinners, Hinself

Vi/iLLiAM v;aed wight

PARKI^AW C HJB PUBLIGAilONS No. 7

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GIFT OF

SEELEY W. MUDD

and

GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER

DR. JOHN R. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD

JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F.SARTORI

to the

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

SOUTHERN BRANCH

This book is DUE on the last date stamped below

OCT 5 193Ci

JUN 1 7 193?

JUL 7 1937

AUG 3 «. JON 18 I95(f

►ARKMAN CLUB PUBLICATIONS No. 7 MiLWALKKE, Wis., June 9, 1896

ELEAZER WlLLIAMS-HlS FORERUNNERS. HIMSELF

WILLIAM WARD WIGHT

LO^ AI\GELES

(Copyright, 1896, by William Ward Wight)

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2008 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

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Elkazer Williams.

y;

ELEAZER WILLIAMS— HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF.

Until within a recent period it had been supposed that the claims for royal descent for Eleazer Williams had been abandoned, that they were, in truth, as

"Dead as the bulrushes round little Mosrs On the old banks of the Nile."

The publication, however, by a reputable London house, oi The Story of Louis XVII. of France} and the appearance of many news-, paper screeds relying upon that volume as authority have re-directed attention to these extravagant pretensions and justify, even if they do not demand, this present writing.

In the parish church of St. Nicholas in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, Robert eldest son of Stephen and Margaret (Cooke) Wilyams was baptised on December ii, 1608. Robert's wife, Elizabeth Stalham, was a year or thereabouts her husband's junior. Robert was a cord- wainer and plied his trade in his native shire from 1623 until he de- serted his ancestral shores. On April 8, 1637, he with his wife and their four children Samuel, John, Elizabeth and Deborah, was exam- ined preliminary to emigration to New England. One week later the family sailed in the Rose of Yarmouth for Boston. Others of the same sirname from the same neighborhood followed their example. Forthwith Robert made permanent settlement in Roxbury where in 1643 his household, now augmented to six children, dwelt upon an estate of twenty-five acres. As a member of the church of the Rev. John Eliot, and as otherwise qualified, Robert was made a freeman ^^ay 10, 1643.-

He was a personage of strong fibre — a rigid Puritan. Self-exiled for conscience's sake, his conscience was his constant mentor. A single incident will picture his character: The magistrates of Massachusetts Bay sent letters to the several towns in 1672, re([uesting pecuniary

1. The story of Ix)uis XVII. of Franco By Elizahoth E. Evans. Swan. Snn- nosehein & Co., London, 1803.

2. Williams' Robert Williams, luUifmln Hotten's Original l.'sts, 20O, 292: Let- ters of Edward H. Williams, jr., of Bethlehem, Pa.; New England Historical and • Jonoalogical Register, II, 53: III, 190: XIV, 32."): XXXV. 247: XI.IV, 212; XLVII. 303. This last set will hereinafter be abbreviated to Register. All authorities cited will I)e enumerated with fuller titles in .Xpjiendix I.

100515

134 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

assistance for Harvard College and inviting criticisms upon the con- duct of the institution. Roxbury, while not refusing the aid, replied on March 5, 1672, complaining of an evil in the method of education — that the youth were brought up in pride ill fitting persons intended lor either the magistracy or the ministry, and particularizing their wearing long hair, even in the pulpit, to the great grief and fear of many godly hearts. Prominent among the endorsers of this indictment were Robert Williams and his son Samuel."

Both Robert and Elizabeth Williams died in Roxbury — the former, September i. 1693, the latter, July 28, i674.^They were the progenitors of many distinguished and honored Americans; not a few of these, despite the capillary criticism, were graduates of Harvard, and one, Colonel Ephraim Williams, was himself the founder of a college.^

Samuel Williams, the eldest surviving son of the emigrant, whose age at death allows 1632 to be computed as his probable birth year, was, like his father, a cordwainer. He was a deacon, and from Decem- ber 9, 1677, ruling elder, in the Roxbury church. On March 2, 1654, he married Theoda, born July 26, 1637, the eldest daughter of Deacon William and Martha (Holgrave) Parke of Roxbury. There Samuel became a freeman in March, 1658, there he died September 28, 1698, and there his widow died August 2, lyi^S^

The second son of this pair, John, over whose strange, sad history the veil of human sympathy has long and fondly hung, was born in Roxbury December 10, 1664.'^ Educated by the generosity of his grandfather Parke he graduated in 1683 at Harvard College,*^ doubt- less without long hair, and entered the ministry. He married July 21. 1687, Eunice, born August 2,t 1664, daughter of the Rev. Eleazer and Esther Mather of Northampton, Esther being the daughter of the Rev. John Warham of Windsor. Mr. Mather, who was born in Dor- chester May 13, 1637, and died July 24, 1669, w^as a brother of the Rev. Increase Mather and a son of the emigrant the Rev. Richard ^Mather (born 1596, died April 22, 1669).'' Upon the premature death of the Rev. Eleazer Mather, his widow Esther (who died aged ninety-two years February 10, 1736) married Solomon Stoddard of Northampton. She thus became the mother of Captain John Stoddard, liorn Fel)- ruary 17, 1682, who figures In^icfly later in tliis narrative.

:;. lU'.nisifv XXXV. 122. 12.1.

4. Uesjstci- XX.\I\'. 09.

."1. Till' Kt'v. .Mr. Vau Itoiissol.icr. in lii< IlisltiriCTl IHsciUise. 54, s:i.vs. of tlie fouiidri- (iC WiUi.-inis College. "Epln-aim Wifliaias \y:is di stvialtil fnaa thf liesl Pu- ritan amo.str.v."

(J. SliuUloir.s Deertield II. 870: Willianis' MoW-n Williaai.'^. 7; Williams' Wil- liams laiail.v, Sli; llugister XXXIV, (>!i. Sljuldnu priiil.>< .\ii-iist 2i;, 171s. iii^trail of .Uigiist 2. 1,718.

7. "SVilliaius" UolftTt: Williams. S; 8heldoa".s iKinliel.l. II, .■!70.

,'5. Williams' Itoilfi'infd I'aptive, '.Hi: Sil'liyS'. Ilarvanl siMdnates. III. 240.

0. nci;isler \l. 20.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 13o

jMinute, perhaps tedious, have been these genealogical details — yet, purposely minute, that it might clearly appear how gentle the flower of saintly New England growth that was forcefully transplanted from Deerfield into the wildernesses of Canada to bloom, and fade, in exile tliere.

Deerfield, or Pocumtuck meaning High Rock Place,!'' was on tlie outskirts of the Massachusetts world when the Rev. John Williams began to preach there in June, 1686. His little following was formally organized into a church and he ordained its pastor October 17, idSS.i'^ Here he faithfully ministered to a loyal flock; here were born the eleven children of his marriage with Eunice Mather.^- Yet in much disquietude was his life passed, ^vlore than once in the circling years tlie dusky prowler surprised the sleeping village; more than once the ruthless hatchet and the pitiless rifle wrought their ruin among its brave inhabitants. These pathetic events pertain not to my theme; yet of one, brief mention is necessary.

Early in the morning of leap-year day, 1704, three hundred and forty French and Indians^^ under Major Hertel de Rouville attacked the slumbering inhabitants. A few happily escaped, more were slain, still more — chattel property for their greedy captors — were taken pris- oners. ■ The narrative of that fatal morning of February 29, 1704, may be read in many histories — in Penhallow, Hoyt, Dwight, Parkman, Slieldon 1^

.Seven children of the Rev. John Williams were sleeping peace- fully at home when the assault began. Two of these, John and a babe Jerusha were killed; five, — Samuel, Esther, Stephen, Eunice and War- ham were captivated. These last with their parents and more than one hundred other prisoners were started without delay upon a cold and dreary journey across Vermont to their future Canadian abodes. Upon the second day of their wintrj^ tramp, March i, Mrs. Williams, whose confinement had been recent,!^ with failing strength was fording Green River five miles northwest of Greenfield. No friend was near to assist her, for the captives had been sprinkled here and there among

10. l{egi.ster XXVIII, 280. Cous\iU as to Deeiliclil New Yurk Colonial Docn- incuts, IV, 1083, 1099.

11. Sheldon's Deerfield I, &7; Williams' Redeem*! Captive, 9l>; Kegisier, VI, 74.

12. The names and vital statistics of these children form Appendix II. A ped- igree of members of the Williiims family mentioned in this paper forms Appendix III.

13. Two hundred French and the remainder Indians— partly Eastern Indians 'n native costume, partly Mohawlis or MacQuas (called Maquass in X. Y. Col. Docs. IV, S03) of Caughnawaga, probably In civilized attire. Sheldon's Deerlield I. 294.

14. Penbpllow's Indian wars, 24; Hoyt's Antiquarian Researches, 186; Dwight'a Travels II, G7: Parkman's Half-century of conflict, I, 52: Sheldon's D.'ei-fleld, I, 9.;. An almost contemporary account is mentioned Uegisttr IX, 161. A wood-cut of .lean liaptisto llertcl, Scignetir de Rouville can lie .-een in Wins a-'s Narrafve au'l crit'cal History V, 100. Tie was thirty-four years of ago at the tln:c of the raid.

15. Her child .Terusha was born .Tanuary 15, 1704. Register XLTV, ^\~t.

136 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

the scattered savages. Her Indian attendant, perceiving that she would prove unprofitable for sale or exchange, tomahawked her as she was staggering up a hill just after crossing the stream. Her body, found by pursuing whites, was reverently returned and now sleeps in God's acre in Deerfield, and a monument to her memory, dedicated August T2, 1886, adorns the slope where she fell.^'^'

After many privations, terrible to suffer, thrilling even to read, the remainder of the Williams family, although in separated bands, reached their different destinations. All of them except one eventu- ally returned to their Deerfield home. The father was exchanged, reached Boston by water November 21, 1706, was recalled to his pas- torate in Deerfield and died there June 12, 1729. i" His The Redeemed Captive Ketiirniiig to Zioii, relates in quaint language the story of the Indian attack, of the inclement march, of the life in Canada. ^^

One of the Williams family, it is repeated, did not return to the Deerfield home. This one, Eimice, her mother's namesake, the de- scendant of two deacons and three ministers of Puritan New England, the far away child of many paternal supplications and bitter tears,^"' frail solitary maiden among many stalwart Indian braves, claims now our sole attention.

Upon the divison of the captives Eunice fell to a chieftain of the settlement which the French called Sault St. Louis but which in sonorous Iroquois is Caughnawaga.-'^ This village, the namesake of a Mohawk hamlet west from Albany, was situated four leagues above Montreal on the south side of the St. Lawrence. As early a^ 1636 the spot was considered sightly for habitation but it was not uniil ib'oj that the first Iroquois went there. These Iroquois, largely Mohawks with a few Oneidas, had been converted by Jesuit missionaries to Catholicism and to the French interest and had been induced from time to time to abandon their ancient seats in New York for homes near IMontreal where they would be under the wing of the Church. Thus dwelling they served both as a Ijulwark against the English and as allies of the French in war and in marauding, while they enriched themselves by lucrative contraband trade between the lower Hudson and the St. Lawrence, .^t about the period of the Deerfield massacre two-thirds of the New York Mohawks had been persuaded to deport themselves to Caughnawaga, so that about three hundred and fifty praying Indians were then living there. In 1750 the entire population may have been one thousand souls. But notwithstanding the religious

16. Sheldoirs DcoHieia II, .377.

17. Sheldon's Deerfield I, 338; Williams' Williams family, 60.

18. For the editions of this little hooli see Williams' Redeemed captive (Noitli- nnipton, 1853) page iii; Allibone's Dictionary III, 2741; Sheldon's Dee.fleld II, 377.

19. Williams' Redeemed captive, 170, 171; Will'ams' Williams family, 93.

20. Baker's Eunice Williams, 23.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 137

influences these mission Indians still continued savages. Although baptized and wearing the crucifix they yet hung their wigwams with scalps, yet wielded their tomahawks against feeble women and innocent children.

Remnants of the Caughnawaga mission still exist and travelers down the St. Lawrence peer curiously at ungarbed pappooses sporting about the shore and at tawny braves stalking aimlessly under the arching trees. -^

Eunice Williams, born September 17, 1696,-^ was between seven and eight years of age when her captivity began. Once or twice during her father's stay in Canada he was permitted to visit and con- sole his daughter. At these occasions he conjured her to the remem- brance of her prayers and of her catechism and warned her against the desertion of her faith. Strenuous yet futile efforts were made to secure her return with him to New England; persistent j'et vain endeavors for her release were afterwards pressed by Colonel John Schuyler of Albany and Deacon John Sheldon of Deerfield. Gradually her susceptible child-nature yielded to her environment and to the gentle demeanor of her captors. She became an Indian in dress and man- ners, a Catholic in religion. Her conversion was consummated by her re-baptism with the name of Margaret. She forgot her English and her catechism. Her lapse from the ancestral creed was to her father the keenest torture.-^

After the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 brought brief peace to America alike with Europe, the father of Eunice and Colonel John Stoddard were appointed by the government of Massachusetts Bay to negotiate the redemption of New Englanders who were in captivity in Canada. The commissioners left Boston November 5, 1713, and spent more than a year in parleyings which were characterized by earnestness and skill on their side and by extreme disingenuousness on the part of the French authorities. The commissioners finally sailed homeward with twenty-six redeemed captives. Eunice however was not of the num- ber although her father saw her and had discourse with her "and her Indian relations." How tantalizing such an interview mvist have been to the now impatient and angered father the dry tone of Stoddard's

21. Authorities conceiuing Caughnawaga : N. Y. Col. Docs. IV, 87, 7-47; V, 742; VI, 582. C20; X, 301; Relation des Jesuites, 1636. 42; Lettres ;difiantes ot curieusets 1, 665; Parlinian's Half-centuiy of conflict I,. 11, 12; Paiknian's The old regime in Canada, 368; Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, I, 61; II, 144; Letter, May 15, 1896, from the Uev. Arthur E. .Tones, S. J., of St. Mary's College, Montrtal; Ba.xter's New I'':aDce in New England, 327; Stone's Sir William' Johnson I, 30. Caughnawaga means, Cook the kettle. Documentary history of New York III, 1108.

22. Sheldon's Deerfield II, 377; Baker's Eunice Willi.iras, 20. Williams" Robert Williams, 15, prints September 16, 1696.

23. Baker's Eunice Williams. 23. 24: Williams' Redeemed Caiitive. :'S: Paik- inati's Ilair-ceiitury nf I'ontlici, I.. 77.

138 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

Journal-* leaves to inference and imagination. Mr. Williams never saw his daughter again.

The date of her marriage is unknown. From the reference in Stoddard's Journal to her "Indian relations,"-'^ from the earnest pro- test of her father to the governor of Canada against marriages be- tween Indians and minor white girls-*^ and especially from a memorial of Colonel John Schuyler to the governor of Massachusetts, it appears that Eunice was already a wife when the commissioners arrived in Canada. The last mentioned document shows-'^ that the marriage oc- curred before May 25, 1713 — before she was seventeen years of age. Her husband was Amrusus, a name roughly civilized into Roger Toroso, a full-blood Caughnawaga Indian. ^s

Of her life among her adopted people there are but few glimpses. She never forgot her ancestral home; she never entirely lost the New England spirit. Her husband assumed the sirname Williams; her only son was called from her father, John."^ In 1740, by the solicita- tion of Colonel John Schuyler,30 who hoped to accomplish her volun- tary return to civilization, she and her husband visited Albany. Here by prior arrangement were present her brothers Eleazer and Stephen and the Rev. Joseph Meacham, her brother-in-law. Yielding to their entreaties the visit was extended to Long Meadow, where her brother Stephen was minister. ■''i Finding that no force was used to detain them Eunice and her husband returned in 1741 with two children, tarrying at Mansfield,^^ Boston and other towns and remaining several months. Public interest in these visitors is attested by the fact that the legislative assembly of the province offered the family a tract of land m Massachusetts for their settlement — a gift which Eunice refused, fearing its acceptance would endanger her soul.^-'' In 1743 a third visit

24. Stotldaril'.s Journal is printed at length in Register V, 26. Miss Baker's Eunice Williams is an interesting account of the efforts made for the relpase of Eunice.

25. Register V, 33.

26. Baker's Eunice Williams, 33.

27. Baker's Eunice Williams, 28, 29.

28. Sheldon's Deei-fleld I, 347; Letter, April G, l.SOG, from Edward H. Wil- liams, jr.

29. Parkman's Half-century of conflict I, 87; Baker'.s Eunice Williams, 37.

30. Colonel Schuyler was born April 5, 1668, and was grandfather of General Philip Schuyler. N. Y. Col. Docs. IV, 406; Lamb's New York I, 153.

31. But she would not lodge in the house; a wigwam was (Constructed in the or- chard and she slept there. Longmeadow Centennial, 74.

32. An extract from; a sermon preached in the presence of Eunice Williams, at Mansfield, Connecticut, August 4, 1741, by her remote relative, the Rev. Soicnon Williams of Lebanon, Connecticut, is preserved in Williams' Redfcmed Captive, 170.

33. Statement of Jerusha M. Colton, a descendant of the Rev. John Witliums, dated May 26, 1836, printed in Williams' Redeemed Captive, 171.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 139

was made.^^ On all these occasions her New England cousins unavail- ingly endeavored to persuade the renunciation at least of her Indian dress and customs.

In 1758, fifty-four years after her forcible abduction from Deerfield she visited this home of her infancy. By her civilized kindred she was rehabilitated in English garb to attend the Sunday preaching in her father's church. Bur neither the sacred associations of the occasion nor the memories of the past, nor the tearful entreaties of her friends, could restrain her from resuming her Indian blanket after the service had closed. 35 Yet she never became a savage in her disposition. Her influence at Caughnawaga was always exercised upon the side of clemency towards captured foes and against barbarous warfare. The Inimane inclinations with which she inspired her martial grandson Thomas Williams amazed .his white allies. ^^ A letter written or dic- tated by her to her brother Stephen in December, 1781, when she was more than eighty-five years of age, shows, if faithfully rendered into English, a resumption, perhaps a continuance, of the methods of expression and drift of thought which must have been familiar to her earliest childhood i^''

My beloved brotlier, once in cai^tivity with me, and I am still so as you may consider it, but I am' free in the Lord. We are now both very old and are still per- mitted by the goodness of God to live in the land of the living. This may be the last time you may hear from me. Oh pray for me that I may be prepared for death and I trust we may meet in Heaven with all our godly relatives.

The writing of this letter is the latest event yet discovered in the life of Eunice. Five years after, in 1786, she died at Caughnawaga.^'^

Of her marriage with the Indian Amrusus were born one son and two daughters, whose dates of birth are unknown. The son John died childless at Lake George in 1758; the daughter Catherine al- though married was likewise without offspring; the remaining daugh- ter, called sometimes Mary but more often and perhaps more correctly Sarah is therefore the only child of Eunice by whom her blood has been perpetuated."" That this statement as to the posterity of Eunice is true is known from her own lips. The Rev. James Dean, who was

34. A letter (now owned liy Edward K. Ayres of Chicago) was written to the Rev. Stephen Williams of Longmeadow, brother of Eunice, on October 24, 1743, by the Rev. John Sergeant of Stoclvbridge. congratulating Mr. Williams "en this third visit from' your poor captive sister," and expressing the liope that "she will now be persuaded to stay with you." The writer, born in Xewarlv, Xew Jerse.v, 1710, Yale 1729, became a missionary to the Stoekbridge Indians, 1734. Register X, 185, 232. Mr. Sergeant married Abigail, sister of Colonel Ephraim Williams, founder of Will- iamg College. Scribner's Monthly, February,; 1895, 247.

.S5. Williams' Williams family, 92-94.

30. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 21.

.37. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gon, 41.

38. Letter, April 6, 1896, from Edward H. Williams, jr.

.39. Williams' Williams family, 94; Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-no-gcn, 17, 18.

140 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

on a mission to the Indians of Caughnawaga and St. Francis in 1773 and 1774 and became well acquamted with Eunice and her surround- ings, thus wrote to her brother Stephen imder date of November 12, i774:*o

She has two daughters and one grunds m wblcli arc all tlie disiendants s e has. Both htT daughters are married luit oue <if tlioiii has nu children. Vuur sister lives comfortably and well and considering her advanced age enjuy'd a .go^d state oi" heaUh when I left the country. She retains still an affectionate reniembianc of her fr ends in N. England but tells me that she never expects to Sc'e thi'm again, tlie fatigues of so long a journey would be too much for her to undergo.

This letter makes no reference to Amrusus — 1 assume tliat he was dead.

Much obscurity gathers about Sarah, the daughter of Eunice. That she was living in 1774 the above extract renders certain. The name of her husband, the father of her children, has eluded much vigilance, and in the search for him the shadow of the Rev. Eleazer Williams of Green Bay glances for the first time across this paper's path. In 1846 that gentleman had personal interviews with Stephen W. Williams, M. D., then compiling the genealogy of the Williams family, and threw this light, if light it be, upon the identitj' of Sarah's husband :*i

In the French war of 1755-60, an English fleet sent out against the French was separated in a tremendous storm near the coast of Nova Scotia. Doctor Williams, an English physician, was on one of the vessels which was afterwards taken by a French man-of-war. As Doctor Williams was a man of science and a distinguished physician, he was treated with a great deal of attention by the French physicians in Canada. He was a botanist and was suffered to ramble in various parts of Canada and was carried by the Indians in their canoes to several of their towns. At Caughnawaga he became acquainted with Sarah, the daughter of Eunice, and in 1758 married her on condition that he would not move from Canada. The physician proved to be the son of the bishop of Chester.

The genealogist who preserves this story was in his lifetime worthy of credit. His genealogy is not a model of execution, is un- indexed and in many ways faulty, but the author was of high character

40. This letter is owned by Edward E. Ayres of Chicago, and was transcribed for me (as well as the Sergeant letter) by the courtesy of Charles A. Smith of Chi- cago. Mr. Dean graduated from Dartmouth in 1773. He passed his early life am mg the Indians and became familiar witli their language. After the Revolutionary war, he was stationed at Fort Stanwix, now Rome, New Yorli, as interpreter. He died at AVestmoreland, New York, in 1823, aged 75 years. Dartmouth Centenaial, 21: Hammond's Madison County, 110.

41. Williams' Williams family, 04.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 141

and of unimpeached integrity and has been praised for his patient, painstaking and disinterested service to his family.*-

It is supposed therefore that he printed the EngUsh physician story precisely as he received it from Eleazer. But I may be asked, Why tarry upon so unimportant a detail aS' the name of the half-breed Sarah's husband? The answer is at hand: The consideration of this trifle may throw light upon the character of Eleazer Williams, and the character of Eleazer Williams is a great part of my subject. ''^ If in this particular Eleazer may be disclosed a fabricator — not to use a Saxon dissyllable of similar import — then the maxim may pertinently be in- voked, Falsits in uno, falsus in omnibus. If Eleazer Williams has de- ceived, deliberately deceived, the world as to the name and identity of his grandfather he may well be assumed to have wrought like deceit as to the name and identity of his father.

Diagnosis of the English physician tale leads to the following, among other, observations:

I. The story itself is highly improbable: a cultivated English gentleman, a physician, a bishop's son, would hardly ally himself for life to a half-breed Caughnawaga girl and stipulate as the price of the alliance, that he would not leave Canada.

II. History discloses no scattering and wrecking of an English fleet just previous to 1758, and the subse:;uent capture of a single vessel by a French man-of-war. The authentic event most similar to the one described by Eleazer — the destruction caused by the storm ofif Louis- bourg in 1757^* — is wanting in the particulars which his story con- tains.

III. In the fall of 1852 this same Eleazer Williams wrote an eulo- gistic biography of Thomas Williams. The pen being now in his .own hand he must needs make wary statements. In announcing the parent- age of Thomas (who was the son of Sarah) an account is given of Thomas' mother,-*^ but not a single syllable is devoted to his father — he is not even hinted at. Does not the argitmentum ab silentio apply with strong force in such a case? Would Eleazer Williams, himself then an Episcopalian, neglect so grand an opportunity to glorify his family by attaching it to that of an English prelate, if truth permitted, if fear of discovery did not prevent? Why did he not in 1852 endorse by repetition the oral statements of 1846?

IV. In the biography of Thomas Williams just described, it is

42. Itegister XLIX, ISl; IX, 370; II IIG. Dr. S. W. Williams died aged sixty- flve years, July 6, 1855.

43. The Rev. Francis L. Hawks, D. D., in his iutroductory note to Hanson's Hare We a Boiirhoti .\nionf; Us. in Putnam's Jlouthly .Magazine I, 1!)4, lemarks that Elcazer's "character for veracity becomes an all important question."

44. Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe I, 472.

45. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 17, 18.

142 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

written that at the age of twenty-three years or thereabouts Thomas used an interpreter in conversation with his New England kin^" Cer- tainly no need for such service could have existed if he had been the son of an English father, not to suppose if he had been the son of a distinguished physician, a botanist, a man of science, of England.

V. Eleazer Williams, during his lifetime, made so many variations upon the identity of this husband of Sarah and father of Thomas as to demonstrate his versatility at the expense of his veracity. To the Rev. Mr. Hanson, author of The Lost Prince, it was stated, or more accu- rately, by him it was recorded,'*''^ simply that the young Indian girl married an English physician named Williams. When the 1853 edition of The Redeemed Captive appeared, the diocese of the bishop, whose son had exiled himself for a Caughnawaga bride, was changed and had become Chichester.'is When, about 1845, Eleazer filed his pedigree with the New England Historic-Genealogical Society he recorded the husband of Sarah as Ezekiel Williams an English physician.'*^ To the prince de Joinville in 1841 Eleazer related that on his father's side he, Eleazer, was of French origin ;5o while the present genealogist of the Williams family has several lines of Eleazer's descent all purport- ing to emanate from him and all dififerent.^i

VI. There never was a bishop of Chester of the name of Wil- liams. The nearest designation to Williams in the Chesterian hier- archy was that of John Wilkins, brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell, who was consecrated in 1668, ninety years before the alleged marriage of Sarah, and who died November 19, 1672.^2 There was a bishop of Chichester named John Williams, but he was born in 162,4,^^ and it has not yet been discovered even in the Registry of the diocese that he ever married.'^*

VII. There has not j^et been traced in Canada in the last century any English physician named Ezekiel Williams or any such physi- cian of that sirname who even remotely would answer Eleazer's de-

46. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 39. When Thomas Williams was at liong- meadow church in 1800 he "could not understand a word of the services." Colton's Tour I, 160.

47. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 182.

48. Williams' Redeemed Captive, 176.

49. Huntoon's Eleazer Williams, 259. Eleazer became a corresponding member of the New England Historic-Gfenealogical Society August 6, 1845. See Rolls of Mem- bers, 1844-1890, page 90.

50. Hanson's The Lost Prince. 404.

51. Letter, April 6, 1S9G, from Edward H. Williams, jr.

52. Neal's Puritans II, 275: Noble's Protectoral House of Cromwell II, ."12.

53. AUibone's Dictionary III, 2741.

54. Letter, March 21, 1896, from F. S. M. Bennett, private secretary to the present bishop of Chester; letter May 18, 1898, from Sir Robert Raper, private sec- retary and registrar to the bishopi of Chichester. I am Indebted to these right rev- erend gentleji#Bn and to their courteous assistants for prompt and full replies tn niy questions.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 143

scription of Sarah's husband. Before venturing this assertion care- ful search has been made of Dr. Munk's Roll of the Royal College of Physicians from 1518 to 1800,^^ Dr. Canniff's The Medical Profession in Upper Canada, 1783 to 1850^^ and Tanguay's Dictionnaire genealog- it/ue.'''

I conclude therefore that Eleazer Williams unconscionably mis- stated the facts as to the identity of his paternal grandfather; that he did not know, or did not care to disclose, the true name and national- ity of that ancestor and that his persistent reference to a personage called Williams as that ancestor was due to his desire to trace his own possession of that sirname to the usual method of acquiring such des- ignations and not to that of adoption. The fact is that the husband of Sarah was an Indian of unknown, mayhap of unpossessed,- name, and that, just as Amrusus called himself Williams from reverence for his vvife's New England ancestry, so the aboriginal husband of Sarah assumed the same sirname for a similar reason. "S

Of her marriage was a son Thomas, or Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen who was apparently her only child. ^^ Eleazer in his life of Thomas, in- forms us that Sarah died when her son Thomas was fifteen months old, that is to say, about 1760. '^o But if the Rev. James Dean, in 1774, can be believed to have accurately employed the present tense in his be- fore quoted letter to the Rev. Stephen Williams, Sarah was living not fewer than fourteen years after her grandson writes she was dead. From the usual longevity of the Williams family and from Eleazer's notorious innocence of acctiracy I fear that Mr. Dean was a truer grammarian than Eleazer was a reliable historian.

Thomas — for his hyphenated Iroquois name is too cumbersome — was born about 1758 or 1759.^^ He was a sprightly active lad, and was skilled in the chase. He was of the age of eighteen years when the war of the Revolution began. With the remainder of his band he espoused the cause of England and was made a war chief in 1777. He was pres- ent more or less actively at Bennington and at Saratoga but he ap-

55. In two octavos, Longman's 1861.

56. Containing short biographical memoirs of several huudrtd persons. Altliouiili 1783 was later than the time of Sarah's marriage, her claimed English medical hus- band should have been in this volume had ho spent hs life in Canada tind livel to a reasonable age.

57. Seven large volumes.

58. Letter, April G, 1896, from Edwaid H. W'illiams, ji-.. of Betii;ehoni, 1 enn- sylvaniff, who for twenty-oight years has sought from original sources, the liistory of the descendants of Robert Williams. That the Indian posterity of Eunice Williams assumed her sirname appears from the preface to Fessenden's Sermfin. That it is not uncommon fox' mixed-blood Indians to take the ramp of their white an (Stms appears from Colton's Tour I, 158; Davidson's In Unnamed Wiscr.nsin. 05.

59. Williams' Williams family. 94; Dean's Litter, .s(;;ir,v.

60. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 17.

61. Boston Daily Journal. October 17, 1S4S.

Ui ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

pears not to have been entirely harmonious with the British ofticers, perhaps because he lacked the usual Indian ferocity. His biography ascribes his undoubted clemency, his magnanimity in battle and to captured foes, to the influence of his grandmother Eunice. While none disputed his bravery, his generosity excited the surprise of his fellow warriors. Sir John Johnson heartily disliked him — a hostile feeling which Thomas warmly reciprocated and which had its influence in changing his allegiance when the war of 1812 was brewing."-

After the peace of 1783 Thomas resumed the chase, carrying his vocation as far as Lake George — his frequent and favorite hvmting- ground63 — and often visiting Albany to barter his furs. At the Dutch capital he became the friend of General Philip Schuyler who had been a pupil in the household of the Rev. Stephen Williams of Longmead- ow*'* and who was the grandson of Colonel John Schuyler, the strenu- ous advocate for the release of Eunice Williams. With letters from General Schuyler he made his first visit, in 1783, to his New England kin and formed those friendships which led to important consequences in the lives of two of his sons. At Stockbridge the interpreter between Thomas and his English-speaking cousins was the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, missionary to the Oneida Indians,''^ the tribe to which afterwards the son of Thomas was to minister in the same capacity. At Longmeadow he found to his sorrow that his great-uncle Stephen, to whom Eunice had recently written so pathetically, was dead."" Thomas never forgot his New England connections. His friendship with the Rev. Samuel Williams, LL. D., of Rutland, Vermont, was very intimate and was full of satisfaction and helpfulness to both.*'"

When the great misunderstanding arose between England and the United States in 1808 President Jefiferson addressed a letter to the bor- der Indians. In this he stated that the impending war was no quarrel of theirs and urged them to remain quiet and neutral. Moreover he promised them that should the British claim their services and they chose instead to break up their settlements and cross into the United States, he would find other settlements for them and make them chil- dren of the young Republic. •'s In addition, when the war actually broke out, the President sent a personal invitation to Thomas Will-

62. Williams' Te-bo-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 21, 36.

63. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 1S3, 184; Williams' Te-ho-ia-gwa-ne-geu, 20.

64. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 37.

65. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 39. For the auoestiy ol' Mr. Kirlda'ul see Register XIV, 241; XLVIII, 66.

6G. The Rev. Stephen Williams died June 10, 1782, after a pastorate ov3r Ixjngmeadow church of sixty-six years. Register XXXVII, 4f»: Hullaiurs Western Massachusetts II, 78; Williams' Williams family, 71, 85.

67. Williams' Williams family, 42.

68. The original Jefferson letter belonged to the widow of Thouuis Williams. It is copied in full in Exhibit A, Report of HnU'^e Committee on Military Affais No. 83, 34th Congess. Third Session, January 10. 1857.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 145

iams, as one of the infiuential Iroquois chiefs, to join the American standard, asking him to repress any belHgerent movements which might be contemplated by his own or other tribes against the United States and promising him full indemnity for any losses which his loy- alty to the Republic might occasion, besides support for his family and himself during the war.*"* Confiding in these assurances Thomas Williams removed to the United States in 1813, and was soon followed by his son John and by other Caughnawagans."" This was not a great hegira in point of distance, but by it he abandoned his Canadian home, sacrificed an estate of not less than seven thousand dollars and lost an annuity of two hundred and fifty dollars which he had enjoyed from the British government. This removal, the active aid ot Thomas and his band against England and the inertness or neutrality of the other Indians whom Thomas influenced, so aroused against him the resentment of his former allies that he was prohibited from re- turning to Caughnawaga to live — he went there in the evening of his daj's to die.

It is not to the credit of the United States government that despite much personal effort by Thomas and much solicitation upon the part of his friends, his distinguished services in this war were not requited, and his large pecuniary sacrifices were not made good, during his lifetime. That his efiforts were efftcient and valuable and were continued without intermission until the close of the struggle was admitted by the Senate of the United States more than forty years afterward, yet both Thomas and his widow emphasized by their impov- erished and unrecompensed old age the ingratitude of republics. In 1858 too tardy justice was done the estate and memory of Thomas Williams. "1

Respected and beloved by his people, in his native village of Caughnawaga, he died — but when? Eleazer Williams in his biography of his father states'- that the latter died August 16, 1849. But here appears the Boston Daily Journal of October 17, 1848, which in- forms the world that Thomas, in his ninetieth year, died in Caugl^- nawaga September 16, 1848. To prove that this item was not prem- ature, I find it repeated in the New England Historical and Genea- logical Register for January 1849"'' — abundant opportunity for correct- ing the earlier publication if incorrect. I deem it established therefore

69. Memorial of his widow. M.iiy Aim William-;, dati (1 f^oplemb T. 184': affidii Tit of Eleazpr Williams, .Tanu.ary 18, 1850, both attached fo said Report No. S3.

70. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 72, 73, 76.

71. Report, April 17, 18.58, of House Committee on .Military Affairs, No. 303, 35th Congress, First Session, is authority for the facts as to Thonr:s' change of service and as to the tardy justioe of the govornraent he was invited h> serve.

72. Williams' To-ho-va-gwa-ne-gen, 90.

73. Register III, 103.

146 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

that Eleazer Williams blundered eleven months in penning the time of his father's death, and this when writing within three years after the event and when the proper date was well known and had been widely distributed in the public prints. Can Eleazer's sole authority be accepted upon any point as to which general noninformation and difference of opinion exist? Are we not justified in adopting the animadversion of Lord Macaulay upon Mr. Croker:'^-^ "It is not likely that a person who is ignorant of what almost everybody knows can know that of which almost everybody is ignorant"?

The wife of Thomas Williams, named Mary Ann Rice, or Konante- v.anteta, was like himself of mixed blood. "^ She was lineally descended from a youth named Rice stolen by the Indians from Marlboro' in the province of Massachusetts Bay early in the eighteenth century.''" Her father was named Haronhumanen. She married Thomas Williams January 7, 1779.'''' She was a devout Catholic. In 1852 when she must have been more than ninety years of age she was residing on the St. Regis reservation about eight miles from the village of St. Regis. But little bowed with age she walked regularly to church with no other aid than a staff, and was able to attend to domestic duties. She was apparently a full-blooded Indian and spoke no other language than Mohawk.'''^ She died May i, 1856.'^^ As this event happened more than seventy-seven years after her marriage she could not have been far from a centenarian.

Thomas and Mar}^ Ann Williams had not fewer than eleven children. There is printed in Hanson's TJic Lost Prince^^ a tran- scription from the Register of the Mission at Caughnawaga authen- ticated by Father Francis Marcoux, priest at the Mission in 1853 when the transcription was made, showing the names and dates of birth of the eleven children of Thomas and Mary Ann there regis- tered. This list is as follows:

74. See Macaulay's Critical and Miscellaneous Essays II, 20 (New York 1878).

75. Slie was "tliree-fourtlis Indian": Smith's Elenzcr Williams, Wis. Hist. CoU. VI, 309.

76. Letter April 6, 1896, from Edward H. Williams, jr. There were two Rice hoys, Silas and Timothy, captured at Marlboro', Massachusetts, August 8, 1704, and several Tarbell children seized at Groton, same colony, June 20, 1707. Ward's Rice family, 37; Green's Groton, 109. To-day Rices are sub-chiefs at Caughnawaga and Tarbells at St. Regis. Almost half of the village of St. Francis near Caughnawaga was in 1774 composed of Gills descended from another New England captive. See Dean letter described at note 40.

77. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 468.

78. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 89, Hough's note.

79. Report ixo. 303, House Committee on Military Affairs, 35lh Co!g es . First Session, April 17, 1858.

80. Page 468.

81. This name occurs lower in the List in the feminine form. These l\v<i weie doubtless so named in compliment to .Tohn Baptist Toietaliheronti.', a f rien 1 and fellow-hunter of their father. Williams;' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 38.

HIS FOJiEEUNNERS, HIMSELF.

117

Jean Baptiste,'*^	ne le	7 Sept. 1780.
Catherine,	nee le	4 Sept. 1 78 1.
Thomas,	ne le	28 Avr. 1786.
Louise,	nee le	18 Mai 1 791.
Jeanne Baptisle,		21 Avr. 1793.
Pierre,	lie le	25 Aout 1795.
Pierre,		4 Sept. 1796.
Anne,	nee le	30 Janv. 1799.
Dorothee,		2 Aout i8oi.
Charles,	ne	8 Sept. 1804.
Jervais,	"	22 Juil. 1807.

Three facts appear on the face of this List:

A. The Christian name Eleazer is not to be found:

B. There is a gap of more than four years and seven months between the birth of Catherine and that of Thomas:

C. There is a gap of more than five years between the birth of Thomas and that of Louise.

Assuming for a moment the truth of the oft-repeated statement of Mary Ann Williams, that Eleazer Williams, the subject of this paper, was her child, three questions present themselves. L Where was he born? IL Why was not his birth recorded in the Mission Register? IIL When was he born?

On the threshold of a reply an incident new to the aggressive discussion of the Eleazer Williams problem must be related. Edward ij'ijiginson Williams, a descendant of the emigrant Robert Williams, was born in Woodstock, Vermont, June i, 1824, and graduated from Vermont Medical College in 1846. For more than forty years he has been engaged in railroading and in businesses connected therewith. In 1858 he was assistant superintendent of the Milwaukee and Mississippi railroad with residence in Janesville; in 1864 he became superintendent of the Galena Division of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway: from 1865 until 1870 he was general manager of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and from 1870 until the present time he has been and is one of the firm of Burnham, Williams and Company of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia, in 1851 he was adopted by the Caughnawaga Indians intij their tribe under the name of Raristescres. He is a member of the Swedish Royal Society and a knight of the Order oi the North Star of Sv.-eden.

In August and later months of 1851 this Doctor Williams was employed in the construction of a line of railway at Caughnawaga through the reservation. As an ado])ted member of the tribe he was living with the leading man and [.rinciiial chief. O-ron-hi-a-tek-ha. or George de Lorimier. an Indian oi nnich astuteness and capacity.

148 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

One Sunday during the fall of 1851 several gentlemen, among them a Mr. Parkman*- who was then examining the records of the Cath- olic parish churches in Canada, visited Caughnawaga for the purpose of investigating a story just then becoming widely current^" that Eleazer Williams formerly of that village was not the son of Mary Ann Williams or Konantewanteta. The story was new to Caughnawaga and de Lorimier learning his visitors' errand decided upon a careful examination. Inviting Dr. Williams to be present with the other gentlemen he sent for Konantewanteta and for two other of her aged Indian friends — a man and a woman. Not knowing why they were summoned, they were kept apart from each other and separately questioned as to the birth of Eleazer Williams. There was no chance for collusion. Konantewanteta stated without reservation that Eleazer was her child and that he was born on the shores of Lake George when her husband's band was hunting and fishing there. That Lake George was a favorite camping ground of Thomas Williams has al- ready been shown. The ancient friends when called upon confirmed in detail what Konantewanteta had said, stating that they were with the band at the time the child was born and the squaw adding that she herself was present at the event. The interpreter of the testimony was Alexander McNab, a Scotchman*^ who was a much trusted magis- trate in the tribe and had an Indian wife. The examination being completed Eleazer Williams' story of his royal origin was then trans- lated to the assembled Indians. One and all vehemently denounced the tale as a lie, while the little old mother bursting into tears ex- claimed 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. Ty-ia- ya-ki. or Grand Eaptiste, the pilot of the Lachine Rapids, declared to the company that for a long period before Eleazer was ten years of age he was the playmate and companion of the witness at Caughna- waga. Dr. Williams writes, "The mother o*' 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 understanding. 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 read-

82. Dr. William.s; lias always snppnsfd that this was Francis Parkmnn. the h's- torian. If so, his opinion of Elcaz^or Williams, in Ilalf-Cpntury of Conflict. I, .S8, is doubtless based on the testimony given at this investigation.

S.3. Although the story of Eleazer Williams, as the dauphin had bpcn some- what known before and indeed had bren published in the United States Magazine and Democratic Uoview of July, 1S40, no especial attention had been given to the sub- ject until the New York Courier and Enquirer published articles about it in the fall of 1851.

84. Tlie present priest at ranshn.-iw.-igM, the R'V. ,7. (;}. L. Forbes is .also a Scotcliman.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 149

ing of the statement it was evident that they then heard it tor the first time."*^

To this narrative of a reUable and veracious auditor and eye-witness like Dr. WilHams I attach great importance. The statement of the mother corroborated by her aged companions bears the marks of exact truth. Made with much formahty, made in the presence of the tribal chief, made in the first blush of the false tale, made before cupidity had been aroused and base motives invoked, made before the centenarian had been physically harassed and mentally tormented by opponents and adherents of Eleazer's claims, made eighteen months and two years before affidavits apparently inconsistent had been tor- tured from her agitated and hence vacillating memory, this solemn declaration of the aged squaw and her dusky friends should be accept- ed as very truth, should forever relegate Eleazer Williams to the too numerous company of tmconscionable pretenders.*'^

Returning now to the three questions:

I. Where was Eleazer Williams born? Upon the testimony of his mother — at Lake George. Eleazer himself relates that Thomas Williams was much at Lake George after the close of the Revolu- tionary War.s"

IL Why is not Eleazer's birth recorded in the ^lission Register? liecause it did not take place at the Mission. Absentee births were not required to be listed at the home Mission. One object of regis- tering births was to keep track of the parents, but as Indians desiring to be away must first have obtained permission from the Indian agent, of which a record was kept, absentees were traceable without regis- tration of their oiifspring. So Father Marcoux stated to Dr. Williams and so investigation of the parish books at Caughnawaga disclosed. ^^ Moreover, the affidavit of the old mother Konantewanteta, of July 8, 1853, the original of which Eleazer Williams prepared, st* the transla- tion of which ]\Ir. Hanson corrected^^ j^d the original and translation of which the latter prints with much flourish, proves that one at least of the children whom Eleazer allows Konantewanteta to count as her unchallenged very own, is not registered at the ^fission. Nam-

85. Letter May 11, 180C, of Edward H. Williams, jr.

86. The above account of the examination of tlie aged Indians is from Dr. Williams' own lips, written l)y his son Edward II. Williams, jr., and contair.ed in letters to mo dated April 0, 1.^, 15, 20 and Jlay 2, 1896. X reference to tho same i-xaminatiun will he found in The Nation, June 14, 1894, 440. from the pen .>f the younger Mr. Williams.

87. Williams' Te-lio-ra-gwa-nc-geu, 37.

88. Letters, April 6, 15, 1896, from Edward H. Williams. .Jr.; Williams' Re- deemed Captive, 179; Draper's Additional Notes, Wis. Hist. Coll. VIII. ,556.

89. Ellis' Eleazer Williams, W'is. Hist. Coll. VIII, 350; Robertson's The Last ot the Bourlioii Story, Putnam's, II n. s., 92.

90. Hanson'.s The Lost Prince, 434.

^50 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

ing her progeny in somewhat of a chronological order, Konantewanteta -in that affidavit"^ is made to mention third in order a child Ignatius — a name which by no philological strategy can be manoeuvred into any other name on the Mission List, a name which Eleazer evidently forgot to observe was not on the Mission List, a name which fits exactly into the first gap in the Mission List, as Eleazer"s fits exactly into the second.

I am thus brought to the third question,

IIL When was Eleazer Williams born? The fact that Konante- wanteta could give no date, the fact that she was a frequent visitor at Lake George, render this question difficult. I agree with Mr. Hanson that when he wrote nothing certain was known concerning the problem.^- It is sure, however, that no authority produced by him has carried the birth date back to March, 1785 — the time of the dauphin's birth. Much reliance has been placed upon Eleazer's own statement'-^" in his application for masonic membership in Green Bay in 1824 that he was then thirty-two years of age, that is, born about 1792. Apart, however, from the circumstance that Eleazer as an adult was notoriously unreliable in the matter of vital statistics, an inspec- tion of the Mission List will show that for physical reasons 1792 was an impracticable if not an impossible year. Nevertheless in the ab- sence of additional authentic information which Eleazer appears never to have possessed, the above statement estops him from his later claim that he was born in 1785, especially when in 185 1 he assert- ed^-^ that in 1812 he was twenty-three or twenty-four years old.

No opinion worthy of a second's thought or of a feather's weight has thrown the date of Eleazer's birth back of the second, or later, gap in the Mission List. Dr. S. W. Williams, the author of The Williams Family writes''^ that Eleazer frequently gave 1790 as about his birth year; Calvin Colton, his school-mate, states^" in 1830 that

91. Smith's Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll. VI, 321; Ilauson's The Lj.?t Prince, 435.

92. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 189. It is i)leasant occasionally to agree -with Mr. Hanson whose statements of fact are not seldom ludicrous. Thus on page 184 Colonel Ephraim Williams is described as "an honored ancestor of tha Williams family." But infants in the genealogy of New England families know that Colonel Williams, honored though he was and is, was a bachelor. Sheldon's Deeifleld II, 378; Everett's Address, (in Everett's Orations and Speeches II, 232). As to the relia- bility of Mr. Hanson's statements in Harp We a lionvliou Anions Vs? read the Chaumont letter in Putnam's, II, 117.

93. The original application is in the library of the Wisconsin Historical So- ciety. See it printed in Smith's Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hi^t. Coll. VI, 316.

94. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 6fi.

95. Williams' Redeemed Captive, 176. In 1851, Eleazer, visiting with Dr, S. W. Williams, spoke in the latter's hearing of being the dauphin. S ma one of hi.s host's family having enquired his age, he replied: "If I am a Williams I am so old, but if I am' the daupliin I am older."

96. Colton's Tour, I, 158.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 151

Eleazcr in 1800 was "perhaps ten years old;" Mr. Hal'c, with whose lather at Northampton Eleazer was a pupil, says^'^ that when he first saw Eleazer in 1800 the latter was then but ten years of age; Governor Williams of Vermont who knew Eleazer from childhood supposed"^ he was born in 1790, and two Indians of Caughnawaga who were children with him declared their opinion in 1853 that he was about twelve or thirteen years of age when he first went to the United States, which time is known to be i8oo.^9 The documents of Deacon Nathaniel Ely of Longmeadow, at whose home Eleazer be- gan to live in 1800, vary in giving his birth year (omitting one palpable error of 1781) between 1787 and I788^oo__^}^g latter date preponderating. Indeed. 1788 is the year which Mr. Edward H. Williams, jr., of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has adopted as the true one from evidence se- cured during his genealogical researches. ^''i It will be observed that all these opinions focus in the space which I have called the second i.;ap in the Mission List, that is to say, in the years 1787, 1788, 1789 ;in(l early 1790 — an approximation which agrees with his mother's uncontradicted averment that Eleazer was her foui'th child.^*'- For myself I place implicit reliance upon the date ascertainable from a letter concerning Eleazer written April 6, 181 1, to the Rev. John Brodhead Romeyn. D. D., of New York by the Rev. Richard S. -Storrs. the successor of the Rev. Stephen Williams in Longmeadow church. Mr. Storrs, writing on the authority of the lad's father says, "Eleazer Williams came to this town in January of the year 1800: the ]\Iay following he was twelve years old."io3 That is. Eleazer Wil- liams was born in May, 1788, and as the dauphin of France was horn Alarch 27. 1785, we have here a sort of natal alibi. Banishing now all assumptions and suppositions I lay down as a fact of history — for "History, like the elephant's trunk, concerns herself with very " little things" — that Eleazer Williams was the son of Thomas and Mary Ann Williams and that he was born on the shores of Lake George in May, 1788.

The name bestowed on this son is not without interest in connec- tion with his ancestry. His great progenitor Eunice Williams died, it will be remembered, in 1786. Her grandfather's name was Eleazer: lier eldest brother's name was Eleazer. Is it too much to suppose that Eunice had instructed her family concerning her -New England kin? W^ould not Thomas be quick to honor her memory when his

97. Williams' Redeemed Captive, 176.

98. Willi.nms' Redeemed Captive, 183.

99. Smith's Klpnzer Willijuns, Wis. Hist, Cull. VI. .114.

100. Hanson's The lyost Prinre, 18'>.

101. I.pttpr, Mny 2. ]89(;, from Edwanl 11. Willhiins, Jr.

102. Sniitli's Elonzor Williams, Wis. Ilisl. Cll. VI, .-Sir Priiicp. 432.

10.^. U)n"'MCiul<.u' (•■■iii.niiial, 2:!0.

152 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

next son was born? Here the Storrs letter again speaks: "Elcazcr was baptized, as is supposed, in his infancy by a Catholic priest. His father informed me that he named him after his granduncle Eleazer Williams, first minister of Mansfield, Connecticut."^'**

Vivid pictures are preserved of Eleazer's boyhood at Caughna- waga, beginning with his third year. Clad only in a shirt, bare-footed and bare-limbed he roamed about the Indian hamlet, suffering from exposure to cold and storms, and scarring his legs from rough con- tact with rocks, briars and thorns. These inclemencies, a fall over a precipitous cliflf at Lake George, the scrofulous tendencies in the Wil- liams family, and the self-infliction, later in life, by means of lashc-s and tartar-emetic, of blisters suggesting marks of shackles and other injuries, go a long way to explain the brands and scars upon Eleazer's adult person,ios the sight of which made Mr. Hanson cry.io«

Much has been attempted to be made of these scars as establish- ing the identity of the princely youth, who died at ten years in 1795. with the man who after 1848 and after he was sixty years of age exhibited these marks for the first time for the purpose of establishing such identity.^*'''' Yet this kind of evidence is fragile, is deceptive. On the bodies of several persons may be often seen scars so similar that at a short distance of time it is impossible to remember how they are distinguishable. Yet in the instance in hand, there is an interval ol more than half a century. Scars also wear out in the course of time. They also may be simulated. ^^^ "Such imprints are not protected from piracy by any law of copyright."!''^ Eleazer apparently produced scars to order. When the Dauphin articles first appeared in Putnim's, Eleazer had ready the wounds upon his legs to correspond with .young Louis' legs.^^o But when Beauchesne's volumes arrived from beyond seas and disclosed that the young prince had had scars upon his arms, lo! Eleazer found these also upon his own upper limbs. m One of the most graphic scenes in connection with Eleazer's persona- tion of royalty was when in the dim religious light of a church he exhibited to Dr. Vinton, Dr. Hawks and Mr. Hanson an inoculation

104. Longmeadow Cei tennial, 230.

105. Smith's Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll. VI. .-ilS, .^14: Letter?, April 6, 15, May 11, 1896, from Edward H. Williams, .1r.

106. Vinton's Louis XVII and Eleazer Williams, Putnam's, II, n. s., 340.

107. Hanson's Tlie Lost Prince, 395; Evans' Tlie Stor.r of Louis XVII., 70: Egeland's Tlie Dauphin in Green Bay, in Door Ckiuiity Advocate. D?C3mbjr 22, 189i: Lost Dauphin of France, in Milwaukee Sentinel. December 20. 1894: Waterman's "The Lost Prince," in Chicago Inter-Ocean of February 6, 1895.

108. Wharton & Stillg's Medical .Jurisprudence, III, §640.

109. The Athenaeum, February 3, 1894, page 142.

110. Hanson's Have We a Bourbon Among Us?— Piitnfira's, I. 198.

111. Simms' Iroquois Bourbon, 163.

HTS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 153

mark upon his shoulder in the shape of a crescent, to correspond with a like mark which the duchesse d' Angouleme had stated would be found upon the royal shoulder of her genuine brother. ^i-

Returning now to Eleazer's childhood: While his father was visit- ing Longmeadow in the winter of 1796-7, Deacon Nathaniel Ely, jr.,^^^ (whose wife was Thomas Williams' second cousin) proposed to Thom- as that he send to Longmeadow one of his sons to attend school. The proposition was favorably received but at first came to nothing. In December, 1799, Deacon Ely sent, through a neighbor traveling in Canada, a letter to Thomas containing an oft'er to receive two of his sons to be educated. The motive was a religious one — that the youths would become missionaries to their race.^^* Accordingly on January 23, i8oo^^-^ Thomas, with Eleazer and a younger son, arrived in Longmeadow and the lads began to live in the family of Mr. Ely.

A few sentences from Colton's Tour of the American Lakes will give a photograph of these two Lidian boys as they emerged from un- civilized and sylvan scenes into the routine of a New England school. Mr. Colton was a pupil at Longmeadow where Eleazer and his brother began their studies and w-as an eyewitness of what he has printed. His book was published in 1833:

From the wil(lne.ss of tticir natui-e and habits it was necessary for the master to humour their eccentricities until they might gradually accommodate themselves lo discipline; and but for the benevolent object in view, and tl e gond anticipated, it was no small sacrifice to endure the di.sorder which their manners at first created. Unu.'^ed to restraint and amazed at the orderly scenes around them, they would suddenly jump and cry Umph! or some other characteristic and guttuial exc'amation, and then per- haps spring across the room and malje a true Indian assault upon a child on whom they had fixed their eyes, to his no small affright 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 ill endure at first; and so long as they did nothing but create disorder (and that they did very effectually) they were indulged until by de- crees they became used to discipline aijd began to learn. Their first attempts by ini:- tation to enunciate the letters of the Koman alphabet were quite amusing — so difficult was it to form their tongues and other organs to the proper shapes. If the children of 1lie scliool laughed (as thrro was some apolcrgy for doirii;! theso b:>ys would soirc-

112. Vinton's Louis XVII. and Kleazer Williams. Putnam's, II n. s. 3^9.

ll.'J. Martha Williams, born in May, 173.3, the daughter of the Rev. Steiihen Williams of Ijongmeadow, married January 4, 1759, Dr. Samuel Keyr.olds and had among other children, a daughter Elizabeth. Upon the death of Dr. Reynolds his widow became, on November 15, 1787, the fourth wife of. Deacon Nathan!' 1 Ely. He died in his eighty-fourth year December 26, 1799, and liis widow died aged ninety- two years February 18, 1825. Deacon Ely's S(n of his first marriage, De.-.con Nathan- iel Ely. .iunior, married February 16. 1786, said B izal eth Reyrol:'s. This s th.- Deacon Ely of the lext. Register XXXV, 238; I.ongmeado^<- Cent:nnial, Appendix, page 00. Williams' Williams Family 89 is obscure and inco)r ct here. Deacon Ely, jr., died June 13, 1808.

114. Ij<3ngmoadow Centennial, 230, 231.

115. Hanson's Tlic Lost Prince, 194.

154 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

times cast a contemptuous roll of the eye over the li£tle assembly and then leaviug an "Umph!" behind them would dart out of the house in resentment. 116

I request unprejudiced readers to answer whether either of these boys prior to entering Longmeadow school had ever dwelt in the palace of Versailles, and had his infantile intellect enlightened or his manners moulded by the best instructors in France.

But aided by earnest teachers and assisted by salutary domestic training, the young Indian foresters slowly began to tame. The de- velopment of Eleazer's powers and capacities was not slow, although as will be disclosed he never became a great scholar or even a studious man. With the example of Deacon Ely before him he seems to have become quite apt as a diarist, and from his journals, if the documents printed as such l)y Air. Hanson can be accepted as contemporary with their dates, some opinion can be formed of his mental state. These writings, which Mr. Hanson judges^^'^ began about 1802 or 1803, are what might be expected from a youth of fifteen or thereabouts, backward in his education, and hampered by his early environment, yet struggling for a more ambitious career than that of a hunter. That he was influenced by the p'ety of his benefactor, yet unskilled in the expression of befitting thoughts may be judged from an entry of December 9, 1802, in his Journal:'^'^^ "God is once more pleased to send our father. He came to-day about sundown and brought us news that my sister is sick. God be praised." The diary of Dea- con Ely shows that in these early years of Longmeadow life Eleazer was much subdued by religious influences and while under their sway he recorded his age to be thirteen years when he first reached Longmeadow.'' 1" A seemingly impaired state of health, his unfa- miliarity with routine and discipline, drove him to travel as a portion of his education. Tims, in 1805, he and Deacon Ely were in Boston; later in the year he was in Canada. Li 1806 he began to study with Dr. Welch of Mansfield, Connecticut, where descendants of the Rev. John Williams resided. In May 1807 he was at Hartford where he met President Dwight of Yale College who noticed what others later noticed, that he little resembled his Indian ancestors.^-" In November, 1807, still seeking health he visited Dartmouth College.^-' He must have tarried here some little time in study, for Parkman writes^-- that Eleazer was "educated at Dartmouth," and the Hon-

116. Coltnn's Tour I. 102. Tiie autluir must liave fui-KittGii this p iss:ii;e when he wrote The Lost Prince, in Putnam III, 202. 200.

117. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 198.

118. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 199.

119. Hanson's Tlio Lnst Prince, 196.

120. Dwight's Travels. II, 69.

121. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 216.

122. Parkman's Ilalf-Ccntury of Conflict, 87. Tl.e .■nithm- .'f llisi< ry of llie Dauphin, in United States Magazine and Democratic Review fur .Tii'y. 1849, pnge K!. says that Eleazer was sent to the Academy connected \vi h r):ir nmutli and su-

HIS FORERUNNEES, HIMSELF. 155

orable Norman Williams of Vermont has preserved the circumstance that he made young Eleazer's acquaintance while the latter, of about twenty years of age or thereabouts, was a student in Hanover. Eleazer was then, so Mr. Norman Williams said, a very pompous person, wore a tinsel badge or star on his left breast and styled himself Count de Lorraine. ^23 This trifling affectation seems whimsical enough while reading in Eleazer's Journal^-'*' his comment on the Hanover students: "The young gentlemen appear to be scholars, but I per- ceive that there is something wanting in them to make them complete gentlemen. Modesty is the ornament of a person."

In December, 1809, he became a pupil of the Rev. Enoch Hale of West Hampton with whom he continued nominally until August, 1812. During the early part of this period he did much traveling, making among other tours a journey to the Caughnawagas, at the instance of the American Board of Missions, to ascertain the prospect of intro- ducing Protestantism among his own people. It was during this period also that he first came into close contact with the Protestant Episcopal Church in the person of Bishop Hobart of New York "who even at that early day was attracted by him and showed him much attention. "i2!J Early in 181 1 he again visited Caughnawaga on a similar mission to his former errand, but upon this trip new- influences were brought to bear upon him. The Jesuits approached him with a proposition to accept authority from their bishop as a teacher to the Indians of his tribe. Although educated by Congrega-

tained a good reputation for scbnlai'Ship and Christian character. Tliat lie was no', in the college proper is sliown by the absence of his name from tl^e rerorrts. t'-easiu'v reports, catalogues and like papers relating to that Instituti in. Sr'i' I'lesidcit Tu le- er's letter, August 2."), 1806.

123. Xornian Williams, born October G, 1791. was the eldest son of tl:e Hon- orable Jesse and Hannah (Palmer of Stonington, Conn.) Willi-imii. Je-se was a^soe'- ate judge of the common pleas of Windsor County, Vermont, and was elected presid- ing judge. Declining this trust be was for many years judge of the Hartford, Ver- mont, district. His son Norman was also a lawyer, .Secretary of the Vermont sen- ate, Secretary of State of Vermont, State Senator, and for nearly thirt.v years County Clerk of Windsor County. His wife Mary Ann Wentworth Brown devised the great seal of the state and the seals of several counties and courts. Their son Dr. Edward H. Williams, frequently mentioned in lliis pai er, and l)y whom his father's facts have reached me, has built on the old liomestead in Worxlstock a free me- morial library to his father. These biographical morsels do not seem' foreign to this narrative. Its truth depends much on the veracity and integrity of these gentlemen, and their possession of these traits is aliumlantly shown by the positions of trust and responsibility uniformly held by them.

124. Han.son's The Lost Prince, 210.

12.5. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 218. The Rev. Benjamin Jtotire. D. D., Bishop of New York, and the Rev. Dr. Montain of Montreal were rsp- elally urgent tli;\t Eleazor siKiuld join the Episcopal communion, prnmising everything and anything towards the completion of his education and tlie preparation for missionar.v labor. .\t tliis time Deacon Ely was dead and the Congregaticnalists found it diflBciilt to provide for Eleazer's support. Tx)ngmoadow Centennial 23f>. 231 .

156 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

tionalists and attracted towards the Episcopalians he was not averse to this new offer. Indeed he is said actually to have been commis- sioned by the Jesuits as a teacher and to have received from them a good church library with prayer-books and missals^^s — incongruous companions for his collection of the unprelatical sermons of his ances- tor, the Rev. John Williams, which sermons in large number he had brought away from New England upon his various trips, to be used during his later ministerial peregrinations as his own effusions I^-'

One or two early criticisms upon him the Storrs letter of i8n considers: "I have heard it objected to Eleazer that he appeared fickle, but who would rationally expect that an Indian would at once l>ecome steady? I have heard it said' that he was assuming; this no one will think strange who considers how much he has been flattered and caressed by many of the first characters in New England."i28

Now that Eleazer's life in New England has ended by his return to Caughnawaga it may not be improper to enquire where tlic income arose for all this private tutoring for the young student, this travel- ing liither and yon about the United States and Canada. Where, urge Mr. Hanson and Mrs. Evans, save from some mysterious French- men who were supporting this exiled Bourbon. ^-^ Mr. Hanson has even furnished the name of the agent who acted between Thomas Williams and the French purse, and has given his authority for his statement.is" But after Eleazer Williams' death this somewhat per- plexing matter straightened itself out. His papers including a Jour- nal of a great part of his life and copies of apparently all his letters, filling six or eight cases, came, in or about 1867, into the possession of the Rev. Charles F. Robertson, later the Episcopal bishop of Mis- souri. Among the documents found and inspected by Mr. Robertson were the original bills for the education of Eleazer and his brother, together with evidence of their payment by the missionary societies of }klassachusetts, which expected that these Indian youths instructed at their expense would he their gospel heralds among the dwellers oF the forest. Both the boys were wholly educated at the charge of

12G. Ellis' New York Indiaus. Wis. Hist. Coll. 11, 41S; Ellis' Kecollectioa?;, Wis. Hist. Coll. VII, 243. In the last article it is. stated that wh2u one of th^ Gris- nons of Green Bay was d.ving in 1S23 Mr. Williams "offered the consolations of the clmrcU for the dying, reading in French and Latin from the Roman missal." A note, page 243, adds, "But Williams never openly attempted to teacli a- a Catholic priest."

127. So I infer from Ellis' Recollections, Wis. Hist. Coll. VII, l2G: ICIli.-;' K1e;izi'r Williams. Wis. Hist. Coll. VIII, S24.

]2S. Longmeadow Centennial, 230. 231.

129. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 190, 470; Hanson's Have Wc a Bourbon Anion;; Us? Tutnam I, 202: Evans' The Story of Louis XVII. 20; Wilder's The Bnirbon Who Xever Reigned, Knickerbocker, LII. 447.

130. Hanson's Tlie Tjost Prince, 190.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 157

these benevolent organizations.^""^ Moreover, it must be remembered that Thomas Williams was not poor as Indians go. At any rate, just prior to the war of 1812 he was enjoying an annuity and an estate which even with his large family would have permitted him to con- tri!)utc not a little towards the tuition and traveling expenses of the lads, or, rather, of Eleazer, for the yotinger brother did not continu- ously pursue his English studies. '^-

As to the mystei'ious inflow of French money it is sufficient to say that there was none and no agent for any, for the entire incident was a fabrication which Eleazer palmed ofif upon the public through The .llbaity Knickerbocker. To this newspaper, under a fictitious signature, Eleazer sent a communication which was the origin of all the stories concerning foreign contributions for his maintenance and tuition. Mr. Robertson found the draft or a copy of this communica- tion in Eleazer's handwriting among his effects. i^" The assertion of foreign support for him sprang entirely from his imagination. There were not a few cases, some of which will disclose themselves later, where incidents favoring Eleazer's claim to be the dauphin were insin- uated upon the public through newspaper letters, claiming to be written by persons struck l)y pertinent facts, but really emanating irom the fertile, ingenious and mischievous brain of Eleazer Wil- liams.^^^ This circumstance proves that Eleazer was not inert and supine in the matter of his dauphinship as his clerical supporters so often chorused, but was cunningly and artfully, yet persistently, push- ing his fraud upon public attention. So alert was he that he solicited his friends to find publishers for his various articles. In July. 1848, he wrote 'Mr. E. Irving of New York thanking him for his trouble in going to half-a-dozen offices in order to get a notice of the dauphin printed. ^^j

It was doubtless in anticipation of permanent occupation as in- structor of his fellow Indians that 'Eleazer prepared, and published at Burlington, Vermont, in January, 1813, ./ fracf on man's f^rimitive rectitude, his fall and his rccoz'cry through Jesus Christ, and, in P a'ts-

131. Robertson's The Last of tbe Bourbon Story, Putnam's, II n. s. 93. See also >[atbcs' Pretender to a Throne, New York Times. February IC. IS9C.

132. The Storrs letter in Longmeadow Centennial, 231, .says that in the winter of 1S03 Thomas and his wife risited Lnngmeadow and reported that unless they carried one or both of the boy.s home the priest would escnmniunicate them. The younger was therefore returned to Caughnawaga. but after a year resumed his studies at Longmeadow. This time he remained four years and returned to Canada for good.

133. Robertson's The Last of the Bourbon Story, Putnam's, II n. s. 93.

134. Draper's Additional Notes, Wis. Hist. Coll. VIII, 300: Robertson's The Last of tho Bourbon Story. Putnam's II. n. s. 97.

135. Robcrt.son's The Last of the Bourbon Story, Putna)n's II. u. s. 97. De Quincey, writing in 1853, speaks of the spiritual absorption of Eleazer and his in- ilifTerenco to his high rank. But the author had only Hanson's autlnrily in iiis first T^otnam article. Autobiographic Skrt^i'f;:. ."48.

158 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

burg- in the same year, A spelling book in the language of the seven Iroquois nations. ^^^' But if he commended himseU' to his people as an author, he did not so commend himself as an agent. Empow- ered by the Caughnawagas in 1812 to draw from the state of New York an annuity of two hundred and sixty-six dollars due them upon some land transfers, he received this sum regularly every year from 1812 until 1820; but not one cent of it ever reached the annui- tants. In 1820 by reason of representations made by the Canadian government to the state of New York payment to the unfaithful steward was suspended. i^''' On account of this transaction he lost favor and influence at Caughnawaga. Perhaps this incident helps to explain the fact that when a half century later Eleazer was wrapt in his shroud not a Mohawk brave attended his funeral.'"'^

Eleazer Williams followed his father into the American army in 1813, to the disappointment and grief of his beneficent patrons in New England. 130 gy invitation he joined the troops of General Brown un- der good pay 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. 1*" For this service as well as for active military operations he received the commendation of his officers for zeal, bravery and fidelity. ^^^ Eleazer's own accounts of his achieve- ments in the field are contained in his lournal^*"^ and in his biog- raphy of his father^'^s— accounts which are so fulsome and so self- laudatory as to suggest the thought that no historian of the war of 1812 has properly awarded the laurels of success. In the biography the author calls himself "Lieutenant Colonel Eleazer Williams," and "Colonel E. Williams (the Superintendent General)"!^* — titles which his panegyrists Mr. Hanson and Mrs. Evans do not bestow^, titles which are not accorded him by the representatives of the governmeni; in passing upon his application for a pension. Doubtless like the very nebulous appellation of Count de Lorraine these military honors were self-bestowed.

In the land battle at Plattsiiurg Sc'pteml)cr 14, 1S14. he was

1.3C. Catalogue of the Wiscousin Slate Historical Society, V, 500. 13T. Smitli's Eleazer William.?, Wis. Hist. Cnll. VI, 332. Tliis refer, nee men- tions the exposure of Eleazer's claims in tlic Xi>\v Yurlv Worlil. Seiitemlirr lit. 1807.

138. Huntoon's Klcazer Williams, 27. 1.

139. Colton's Tour, I, 164.

140. Ellis' New York Indians, M'is. Hist. Cull. II, 41S.

141. Report No. 303 of. House Committee on Military Aff.iirs. rlnim of Klo:i/f>r Williams, 35th Congress, First Session, April 17. 1858.

142. Hanson's The Eost Prince, 2.30.

143. W'illianis" To-ho-ra-swa-ne-gtn, 00.

144. Williams' Te-ho-ra-Kwa-ne-gen, GO. 78. 81. 88.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 159

wounded by a splinter in the left side/-*'^ "slightly wounded", as he states in one place ;^^"^ "a severe wound" as he swears in his applica- tion for a pension; "not to that degree as to compel me to leave the corps," as he states in his Journal.^*' His father's nursing and Indian remedies restored him to health and strength after some weeks' confinement.^^** The scar which this injury left is useful to this nar- rative in two ways: Many years later he exhibited it to Dr. S. W. Williams to obtain that physician's professional opinion as to whether such a wound would entitle to a pension, and thus allowed Dr. Wil- liams to discover that the unexposed skin of Eleazer was more the color of an Indian than of a white man.i^^ The scar was carried, in a memorial for a pension, to the senate of the United States, and the report of the Committee on Pensions of that body apparently dis- closes that either the wound or the military service or both could not endure the rigid scrutiny of men charged with the duty of placing only the truly deserving and the really disabled upon the roll of gov- ernment dependents. The report on the Memorial was as follows t^-''*'

The memorialist sets forth tliat he was engaged at sundry times on the Northern frontier of New Yorli during the last war with England in rendering important serv- ieoR to the commanding officers on that frontier, by whom he was employed and tlie evidence before the committee sliows that the memorialist was often at the htid- quarters of said officers and communicating with them. He also states that he re- ceived a severe wound at the battle of Plattsburg. The committee how. ver are not furnished with any proof as to the value or amount of service rendered, nor of it.s nature, nor of the degree of disability occasioned by the wound received liy the m;- morialist, neither can they ascertain by any papers in their possession in what ca- pacity he was engaged when he received said wound nor the amount paid him for the service which he rendered. Under the circumstances the committee ask to be' discharged from further consideration of said Memorial.

Upon the close of the war of 1812 Thomas with his soldier sons, expatriated from Caughnawaga, joined his family at St. Regis. 1=1 This Indian village, bisected by the present boundary between New York and Canada, was founded as a Catholic mission about 1754 and ever since then has been the home of a resident missionary of that church. John and Zechariah Tarbell, captured when lads at Groton. Massachusetts, became Caughnawaga chiefs, and it was one of these who established the sanctuary at St. Regis. i"-

145. Ellis' Xfw York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll. II, 418. 14C. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, 79,

147. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 266.

148. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 269.

149. Williams' Redeemed Captive, 173.

150. Senate Keport, No. 311, 31st CdUgress, Second Session. The rrport, dated February 20, 1851, was made by Senator .John P. Hale.

151. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis, Hist. Coll. II, 418.

152. See Note 76 supra,: Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Associati jn, \'o:uine I. 471. For a description of the village read Da C( sta's Story of St Regi<;'s Bell. Gal- axy, 1870, 124.

160 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

Eleazer, however, was too restive and too ambitious to remain long in this seclusion. Besides, he believed himself out of caste at St. Regis for the determination which he finally reached to abandon the church in favor there.i"^ Quitting alike the Catholic faith in which he was born, and the Congregational faith in which he had been reared and whose societies had lavished money upon his education, he went to New York where in St. John's Epis- copal Church he was confirmed by Bishop Hobart, May 21, 1815.1"^

In the preceding November Eleazer had visited at Oneida Castle, renewing acquaintances he had previously made with some Iroquois of the Oneida tribe. ^^-^ Being satisfied that these bands were more inclined to Christianity and civilization than any other division of the Six Nations he enlisted the sympathy and services of Bishop Hobart with a view to a mission at the Castle. i"*' Having prepared a Book of prayers for families and for particular persons, selected from the book of comuwii prayer, in the language of the Six Na- tions, which was published at Albany in i8i6,i'J' and being armed with a letter from. Bishop Hobart, Eleazer on March 23. i8i6,i''S was again at Oneida Castle, as a religious teacher, lay reader and cate- chist.

He had good qualities for evangelizing work among the aborig- ines. He had become tolerably versed in the Christian system and in theology; moreover, he was a natural orator, a graceful and powerful speaker — most iuA'aluablc aids to persuasion and success among the Indians. ^^9 Had he been content, in the humble avocations of a school-master and an evangelist, faithfully to pursue in sequestered vales the noiseless tenour of his way, he would belike have rounded out for himself a useful and honourable career. Instead, however, by neglecting these pursuits, by stretching out his hand toward vast empire in the west and by indulging inane delusions concerning vaster empire in the east, he wrecked his life, he left at his death a shadowed, not to say a dishonored, name.

Another c[ualification for success among the Indians was his thorough mastery of the Iroquois vocabulary. Reference has already been made to his authorship in that tongue. In 1820 in Utica he printed another spelling book.^"" The Book of prayers just alluded

153. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gon, 51. and Hoiiah's note.

154. Hanson's The Lost Ti-ince. 274.

155. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 270.

156. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll. II, 418.

157. Catalogue of the Wisconsin State Historical Society, V, 566. Eleazer re- visoa this Prayer-book in 1853. Vinton's Lonis XVII. and Eleazer Williams, Put- nam's II, n. s. 339.

1.58. Hanson's The Ix)st Prince. 270: Christian .1 urnal, February. l.<^17.

159. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Crll. II, 419.

160. Catalogue of the Wisconsin State His'orical Society, V, 566.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 161

to was simply a revision of the first part of the Episcopal praj'cr-book which Joseph Brant, he of Wyoming massacre fame, had previously translated^'^i and which was published in London in 1787.1*'- But Eleazer Williams greatly improved upon Joseph Brant in scientific manipula- tion of the letters, for while the latter employed twenty English char- acters Eleazer confined himself to eleven. i"" This reduction simplified the orthography and assisted the child in learning to read — an inven- tion which while of lasting utility to the Indians arose in judgment against the discoverer, as the sequel may show.

Possessing the qualifications just alluded to, it is not to be won- dered at that his labors were at first successful. Beginning with that small portion of the Oneidas who had already become favorable to Christianity through the labors of Occam, Kirkland and Jenkins, and who became known as the first Christian party, these he attached to himself by his persuasive and attractive manners. The majority — nearly three-fifths of the tribe — he attacked with sternness and author- ity. The result was an abjuration of paganism and an acceptance of Christianity.^^'* Indeed, this Pagan party, to be known thereafter as the second Christian party, addressed to the governor of New York a formal renunciation of their heathen beliefs and practices. ^^^ Nay, more, they waited upon him in person in the winter of 1817 and treated with him for a cession of a portion of their reservation for the building of a church and for providing for ministerial support. The ed'.fice was built and Eleazer although not then ordained entered it as minister.i^^

In November, iSig,^''^ began the acquaintance between Eleazer Williams and Albert G. P211is, which materially influenced the career of the latter and which enables us to know minutely the career of the former. Mr. Ellis was born in Verona, three miles from Oneida, August 24, 1800, and was therefore somewhat younger than Eleazer. At his urgent solicitation young Ellis took up his abode at the Castle in November, i8ig, with the understanding that he was to teach the

161. Davidson's In Unnamed Wisconsin, 6S.

162. Catalogue of the Wisconsin State Historical Society, V, 78.

163. Ellis' Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll. VIII, 330.

1C4. Davidson's In Unnamed Wisconsin, C3: Ellis' Eleaz?r Williims, Wis. Hist. Coll. VIIX, 325; Hammond's Madison County, 112.

165. The renunciation, whicii is dated January 25, 1S17, is set nut at le:ig li in W'illiams' Two Homilies, Appendix, p. 19.

166. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll. II, 420. In 1818 Bisiop H .- bart confirmed a class of eight.v-nine poreons, instructed and pr.-s nted by Eeizer Williams. Morehouse's Some American Churchmen, 44.

167. I have adopted Draper's year, 1S19, (Introdnctinii to ICUis' Fii'iy-foiii- years' Recollections, Wis. Hist. Coll. VII. 207-208) instead of 1S20 as given by Mr Ellis himself in Wis. Hist. Coll. VIII, 322. The earlier date is mo e consi-t nt with other racts and with other statements of Mr. Ellis. ?aid Introduction givos a sketch of Mr. Ellis. He resided In Wisconsin more than half a century, held many oflBces of trust and responsibility and was a man of unimpeachable integrily.

162 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

Indian children and be a companion for Eleazer, and in return was to receive from the latter instruction in Latin, Greek and French. Upon removing to the Castle he found Eleazer residing in the homestead of the sometime deceased head chief of the Oneidas, Skanandoah, to which homestead Eleazer had made an addition for school purposes. But young Ellis soon discovered that instead of imparting knowledge to Oneida pappooses he was expected to have Eleazer Williams for a scholar, and that the sole purpose of bringing him to the Castle was that he might teach Eleazer Williams to read, pronounce and write the English language. For owing either to facile forgetfulnes? or to the superficiality of his New England training Eleazer, although he could understand common conversation, could neither speak nor write the simplest sentences with accuracy. Cases, moods and tenses were to him an unknown land. To the last of Mr. Ellis' intimacy with Eleazer (which extended until long after their removal to Green Bay) the latter could not write five lines of English decently. The framing of his letters, the recasting of the old sermons, the prepara tion of his documents, the correcting of his journals fell to his successive secretaries. As to other languages, the only tongue which he spoke to perfection was the Iroquois — strong evidence that he sprang from the Caughnawaga forests and not from the Chateau St. Cloud. Greek was an utter stranger to him; with Latin he had a distant bowing acquaintance — such an acquaintance as his prayer- books and missals might impart. As to French he could read nar- rative and history quite well, but he could not speak a single word respectably. His French wife, of whom anon, more than once said to him, "Now, Mr. Williams, I do beg of you never to try to talk French, you cannot speak a single word right." His French pronun- ciation was such as ignorant Indians on the edge of Canada might acquire, but nothing more and that poorly.i*'® And yet we are called upon to believe that this Gallic stumbler was reared in the very center of pure Parisian — that his infant lips were instructed by Marie An toinette. that he was the brother of Madame d' Angouleme, the pupil of the duchess of Polignac and the abbe Devaux! Semi-idiocy for a half-score years could never have reduced the genuine dauphin to such lingual inibecilit3\

The statements just made as to Eleazer's familiarity with the English language must be remembered in perusing his journals from which Mr. Hanson quotes so copiously. These journal,-; are not fresh from the desk of the autobiographer. Other pens than his must have arranged the orderly consecution of sentences, must have made numbers and persons, moods and tenses concordant, must have

168. Ellis' Eleazer Willi:iuis. Wis. Hist. Coll. VIII. 323, 324, 331, 349.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 163

imparted a faultless orthography — certainly these necessities were be- yond Eleazer's powers, although the ideas were doubtless his.

But if young Ellis was not at the Castle for the purposes of teaching the Oneida childi^en (and during the four years of his stay there he was not once called upon to teach them letters) to what uses was put the school-room addition to the Skanandoah mansion? To base uses. Upon every Thursday afternoon, the Indians who would attend — young men, young women and aged persons — were assembled in this room and treated to a discourse by Eleazer — not to a variation of one of his ancestor's sermons, but to self-glorification. These talks were devoted almost entirely to himself, to his birth and childhood 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 man, he was.'-''^ This man of reminiscences, however, is the same one who in 1851 told Mr. Hanson, "I know nothing about my infancy. Every- thing that occurred to me is blotted out, entirely erased, irrecoverably gone. Rly mind is a blank until thirteen or foureen years of age.''^''''

This little incident has its large significance. If it be true, as Mr. Hanson gravely narrates^'^^ — and Mrs. Evans, of course, too.^'^" — that Eleazer, the disguised dauphin, between the period of his adop- tion by Thomas Williams at ten years of age and his removal to Longmeadow, 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 imbecility and mental unsound- ness, how happens it that in these discourses to the Oneida aborig- ines whose brains he was filling with his own magnificent proportions, his memory reverted, not to the gorgeous halls of the Tuileries, not to the gay avenues of rollicking Paris, not to the sombre seclusion of the dreadful Temple, not to the long line of his royal sires stretching to Hugh Capet, but to the leafy retreats of Caughnawaga, to his In- dian playmates in those woody shades, to hunting and trapping and fishing at Lake George, to his austere strain of pale faced ai costers in Deerfield and Roxbury?

While Eleazer was thus exalting his ancestors, one of them paid him a visit. Twice Thomas Williams traveled to the Castle to visit his son and there young Ellis made his acquaintance. He noticed, and manv others noticed, how much the son favored the father. Tl

Iffi). Kllis' Ele.T/.er Williams,' Wis. Hist. Coll. VIIl. 329.

170. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 339.

171. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 183.

172. Evans' Story of Louis XVH, IG.

164 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

the son was Bourboiiic — and no one denies that his appearance, espe- cially in youth, strongly suggested the French^'^ — then was his fa- ther Bourbonic also, for the latter had the peculiar cast of countenance stronger than the son.^^^ De Lorimier the head chief of the Caugh- nawagas in 185 1 had the same features in 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 common to all the Caughnawagas descended from white ancestors. De Lorimier exhibited to Dr. Williams at the investigation several members of the tribe who had the peculiar or Bourbon features. ^"^ This infantile resemblance, real or fancied, to Louis XVII, to which the attention of his mother and himself was called in his childhood by passing 'soldiers^''^ doubtless started the busy and wily mind of the adult Eleazer upon that 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. His hair, eye-brows and eye-lashes were of the most inky raven 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 dis- tinguished half-breeds among the Six Nations from half-breeds in die west.i'i'9 His dark complexion, so opposite from the blonde features of Louis XVII. IS'* was noticed by Mrs. Kinzie in 1830, who had she nol heard his Connecticut relatives so often call him their Indian cousin might have thought him a Mexican or a Spaniard. ^^^i

Nor did he lack decided evidence of his Williams ancestrJ^ The frontispiece portrait in The Lost Prince shows many Williams feat- ures. A letter in my possession from Edward H. Williams, jr., too technical for insertion and requiring illustrations for its elucidation, shows these resemblances in a convincing manner. i''-

173. Eobertson's The Last of the Bourbon Story. Putnam, II. n. s. 92; Vinton's Louis XVII. and Eleazer Williams, Putnam's, II. ii. s. 3.33; P a-.ois' OUl New York, 1G.5 n.; Editor's Easy Chair, Harpers, June 1682, lis.

174. Ellis' Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coh. VIII, 318.

175. Letters, April 6, 15, 1896, from Edward H. Williams, jr.

176. Neville's Green Bay, 223; Huntonn's Eleazer Williams, 2."i.j.

177. Parkman's Half-Century of Conflict, I, 88.

178. Ellis' Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll VIII, 348.

179. Trowbridge's Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll. VII, 414.

180. Beauchesne's Louis XVII., 20.

181. Kinzie's Wau-bun, 52. Eleazer had the Indian habit of toeintj in, which when grown he tried in vain to overcome. Letter, May 2, 1896, from Edward H. Williams, .tr. His ears also betrayed him. Butler's Stor.v of Louis XVII., Th ■ Nation, May 31, 1894, 417; Shea on Eleazer Williams, Am'. Hist. Record, July 1872, page 300.

182. Letter, May 8, 1896, from Edawrd H. Williams, jr. The frontispiece to this paper is a half-tone from' a photograph of an oil painting of Eleazer Williaus

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 165

Notwithstanding the success which attended Eleazer's early evan- geHzing efforts at the Castle incidents were happening which fretted him, alienated his friends and impaired his usefulness. Indeed, the same dishonest traits which weakened his hold upon the Canadian Indians began to display themselves. An instance must be given: Mention has been made of the little church which the Oneidas were to build from the avails of the transfer of a portion of their reserva- tion to the governor of New York. These avails, four thousand dol- lars, were intrusted to two gentlemen in Utica who having implicit confidence in Eleazer committed them to him. The building was com- pleted at a cost not exceeding fourteen hundred dollars, but the bal- ance was never repaid nor could the trustees ever bring Eleazer to adjust his accounts.^ ^'^

More than this, he was constantly in trouble with the white resi- dents at Oneida Castle who, rendering to him their bills for services performed or merchandise delivered, invariably found their claims con- tested and payment procrastinated. Thus his reputation began to darken, his influence to wane, among his white neighbors and his Indian flock. '-^

But in spite of these domestic troubles Eleazer during his stay at the Castle began to be widely known as an authority on matters -jer- taining to the Indians. From New York, Philadelphia, Hartford, Boston, letters were addressed to him enquiring about labors of mis- sionaries among the Indians; the travels and discoveries of La Salle, Hennepin, Marquette; early conflicts of the red man with New Eng- land 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 tradi- tions, i*-" Yet there is grave reason to fear, in the cases of two, at least, of these enquirers, that Eleazer Williams wilfully deceived them con- cerning the massacre at Deerfield. Epephras Hoyt published his meritorious Antiquarian Researches in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in 1824. While he was preparing his chapter relative to de Rouville's raid, the author's brother. Colonel Elihu Hoyt. conversed with Eleazer and learned some quite new matters concerning the morning of Feb- ruary 29, 1704. He discovered, for instance, that Eleazer on a recent vist to Canada, had found a silk overdress which .Mrs. Eunii:c Williams wore that fateful morning when the Indians hurried hur

executed about 1833 by Geoi'sc Cutlin and now owned by tho Wisonnsiii Stiito His torical Society.

183. Ellis' Elnazpi- Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll. VIII, .'iSo.

184. Ellis' Eleazer Wiliiains, Wis. Hist. Coll. VIII, .'?2.5: .ouiiiaio Williains' 'iv ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen. Hough's Introduction, page 9.

18.^. Uobertson's The I>nst of tlie Bourliou .^^tury Putnam's. II, ii. s. 94.

166 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

off directly after the sacking of the village. But it is exceedingly im- probable that Mrs. Williams stopped to don her party gown on that massacre morning, while it is a fact that she was tomahawked one day's march out of Deerfield and her body left, unplundered, as :t fell, by retreating savages. Likewise, Eleazer told Colonel Hoyt lint returning commanders of expeditions were required to deposit in one of the principal convents in Canada copies of the journals of their ex- peditions, and that he, Eleazer, had found in a convent in Canada a copy of de 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 seeni^ ever to have seen de Rouville's journal. Still again, Eleazer related to Colonel Hoyt and to others that when Deerfield was destroyed th<". Indians removed the church bell, conveyed it as far as Lake ChampUiin 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 cir- cumstance that St. Regis was not established until half a cenvurj- after Deerfield was raided, the Deerfield church had no bell.^^*' The practising of this imposition upon Mrs. Sigourney has given the world The bell of St. Regis^^~ Mr. Hough, who, however, perched the Deerfield bell in the Caughnawaga steeple, seems to have printed the same story without sufficient investigation, ^^s ^nd Mr. Longfellow has accepted it without question. i^'' Somewhat later, about 1850. Eleazer attempted a fraud upon the state of New York. He offered to sell to the secretary of state Marquette's Journal and his original map which Eleazer claimed to have found in the ruins of the Caughna- waga church. i^** But the Caughnawaga church was never in ruins and the original Marquette Journal and map were, at the time Eleazer offered to sell them, one of the chief jewels of St. Mary's College. Montreal, as they are to this day.^^^

A circumstance which contributed to the wide reputation of Eleazer Williams as an Indianologist was the scheme which he either originated or actively advanced for an emigration of New York red men to the regions west of Lake Michigan and the foundation of an Indian empire there over which he should reign. With whom the

I8G. Hoyt's Antiquarian Researches, 193; Register XXVIII, 287; Proceedings of Massachusetts Historical Societ.v, 1869-70, pnge 311. See in the Galaxy for January, 1870. page 124, Da Costa's .Story— a readable ai count of the romance.

187. Mrs. Sigourney's poenr is printed as Appendix IV.

188. Hough's St. Lawrence and Franlclin counties, 115.

189. Poems of Places — America, 98.

190. Shea's letter in American Histoiical Reioid, Juy 1872, pagp- iO>.

191. The journal was in the Hotel Dieu, Quebec, from about 1803 until 1842: and in the College of St. Mary in Montreal from 1842 until the present time. Winsor's Cartier to Frontenae, 247. The map was found by Mr. Shea in the College of St. Mary wlicre it was put in 1842. Winsor's Narrative and Critical History IV, 217.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 167

idea of peopling these Occident shores with orient aborigines first had birth — whether with the Rev. Jedediah ^Nlorse. D. D.,i''- or with the Rev. Eleazer Williams/"^ or whether it had still earlier origin with the tribes themselves^'*'* — is immaterial here. Certain it is that in 1820 Dr. Morse^*'" visited Mackinaw and Green Bay at the instance of the Stockbridge Indians, ^^^ for the purpose of selecting, and negotiating for a cession of, eligible lands. The choice which he made, and his report^''" upon the condition of the tribes in the west, were so satis- factory to the Stockbridgcs that they determined to enlist the co-op- eration of their friends and neighbors, the Oneidas. For this purpose Dr. Morse in October, 1820, visited the Castle^^s ^^d found not only that Eleazer Williams was ripe for the removal, but that he had already taken a step in that direction. That step was his first western trip.

In the preceding winter application had been made to the War Department at Washington by persons purporting to be representa- tives of some of the New York Iroquois tribes, and of the Stockbridge and St. Regis tribes, for leave to visit^the Green Bay Indians. The secretary of war granted the permission, furnished delegates to the number of twelve with rations and ammunition and directed the Commissioner of Indian AfTairs at Detroit to expedite the travelers with a government vessel should one fit for service be there upon their arrival. The delegation, in which was Eleazer Williams, reached Detroit July 22, 1820, in the steamboat IValk-in-the water.^^^ But the party proceeded no further. Learning that the Indian agent at Green Bay, Colonel John Bowyer, had received from the Menominees a cession of forty miles square of their land at Fort Howard, which was the very land the members of the delegation coveted, and the purchase of which was their real errand, they returned home defeated and chagrined.-"^

192. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll. II, 420.

193. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll. II, 421; Ellis' Eloazer Williams. Wis. Hist. Coll. VIII, 331.

194. Marsh's Stockbridges, Wis. Hist. Coll. IV, 300; Ellis" Now York Indians. II, 416.

193. For a brief sketch of Dr. Jlorse see Dayidson's In Unnamed Wisconsin, 47. He arrived in Green Bay, July 7. 1820, as see Davidson, 52: Neville's G.ee:i Bay, 175: Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll. II. 417, note. Dnrrio (Orotni r.ay. [lajre S) in writing 1.921, is one year too late.

19G. The Stockbridges, more properly caTled the llo-he-kuu-iuicks. witi- i mi- grant.s at an early day from Massachusetts to Oneida County, Now York, where the Oneidas coded to them a slice from the Southern portion of thoir io>oi-vation. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll. II, 41(>.

19T. This report, the most coniplolo ami exhaustive then i v r made on the con- dition, number, names, territory and general affairs of the Indans was pnblislod in .Vew Haven in 1822, 490 pages, octavo. Catalogue of United States rublicatinns, H9.

198. Ellis' Elea/.er Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll. VIII. 327.

199. Detroit Gazette, July 28, 1820.

200. Ellis' New York In.lians. Wis. Hist. C 11. II, 423.

168 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

Hence Eleazer was at the Castle to meet Dr. Morse in October, 1820. But although these two agreed in expediting an Indian hegira, they differed radically in their motives. Indeed, there were three motives operating from three different directions in favor of removal : From Dr. Morse and the Stockbridges, that the latter and their com- panions might have Christian homes, free from Caucasian contamina- tion; from Eleazer Williams, that he might lead the Iroquois and their allies to vast areas for a grand imperial confederacy; and from the New York Land Company, that its already acquired pre-emption right might attach to the fertile lands of the New York Indians, which would happen as soon as these should quit the state. -''^ All agreeing in the result to be accomplished, Eleazer was easily the ally of both. He made the visit of Dr. Morse as pleasant and as profitable as the inertness of the Oneidas and their unwillingness to remove would permit. Indeed, he put into their mouths an address to Dr. Morse agreeing to depart — an address which they never made and which they repudiated as soon as they understood its sentiments. -^-

The treaty of cession which Colonel Bowyer made with the Menominees was rejected by the Senate of the United States-*^^ and therefore it was believed that a second trip to the west by the New York Indians might result in their acquiring the longed for lands about Fort Howard. Consequently in the spring of 182 1, Eleazer Williams, aided by his friend Ellis, whose youthful ardor had been stirred by the grandeur of the plan of Indian empire unfolded to him. began preparations for the journey.-"*

A visit by them to New York, Philadelphia and Washington ac- complished much. The New York Land Company supplied them with money; the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Prot estant Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Board of Missions handed them cautious but efficacious endorsements and the President of the United States accorded his assent for a large delegation to visit Green Bay under government patronage and protection. The party consisted of duly accredited representatives from the Stock- bridges and from the first Christian party of the Oneidas which had finally approved Eleazer's plan^ Individual Indians on their own re- sponsibility joined the company from the Tuscaroras, Onondagas and Senecas, for these tribes as bodies had never yielded their consent tn Eleazer's earnest blandishments. Eleazer himself went as represent.!

201. Davidson's In Unnamed Wisconsin, 55; Suthei-land's EiU-l.v Wisconsin, Wis. Hist. Coll. X, 278. For some account of the New York L ird Comi aii.\ 'o relations witli tlie Six Nations, see Seneca Nation of Indiars i- Cli'isty, 40 Tin i 521; 12ii N. V. 122; 162 U. S. 28.3.

202. F:ilis' Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Cull. VIII, 327.

203. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll. II, 423.

204. Ellis' Eleazer Williams. Wis. Hst. Col. VIII. ;31. .'i.-S.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 169

tive of the St. Regis tribe but apparently without their author. ty.^oj The delegation left Oneida in June, 1821,200 and arrived July 12, 1821, on the IValk-in-the-Water at Detroit.207 Here Governor Cas5 added Charles C. Trowbridge to the party to protect the gov.-'-n- ment's interests. -'^•■* The Walk-in-the-Water, with its load of trav- elers, started for Mackinaw July 31, 1821.209 Leaving Mr. Ellis there, for he was ill,-io the IValk-in-thc-lVater advanced towards Green Bay — the first steamer to plough the waters of Lake Michigan.-'^

The party reached Green Bay August 5, 1821,-1- but there was no one to meet them. Colonel Bowyer, the Indian agent, had died the preceding winter and the interested bands had not been informed of the projected visit. With difficulty the Menominees and Winne- bagoes were brought into council. When so brought they at first refused to negotiate. Finally, however, through the influence of the French inhabitants and traders, a reconsideration was accomplished and on August 18, 1821, a treaty was concluded by which was ceded to the New York Indians a strip about four miles in width crossing Fo.K River at right angles, with Little Chute as a center and running each way equidistant with the grantors' claim to the country. The price paid was five hundred dollars in cash and fifteen hundred dollars in goods to be delivered the following year.-^^

If the agents were satisfied with this treaty their principals and others whom they hoped to bind were not. All the tribes, except the St. Regis band, took action upon the return of the delegates. The cession was voted paltry and the motives of Eleazer were termed mer- cenary if not villainous. The Oneidas especially, including even some of the first Christian party, were vehement in their action. 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 Eleazer as having any authority to represent them either civilly or religiously, and requesting the Bishop to withdraw him as their religious teacher.-^*

205. Ellis' Eleazer Villliams, Wis. Ili^^t. Coll. VIII, ii:«, 331: Wlilttle^^oj's Itec- «ji;«ctions, Wis. Hist. Coll. 1, 6S note.

206. Ellis' Recollections, Wis. Hist. Coll. VII, 210.

207. Detroit Gazette, July 13, 1821.

208. Ellis' Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Cull. VIII, 335.

209. Baird's Early Wisconsin, Wis. Hist. Coll. II, 94, note.

210. Ellis' Recollections, Wis. Hist. Coll. VII, 213.

211. Baird's Early Wisconsin, Wis. Hist. Coll. II, 94, and mitc.

212. Durrie's Green Bay, 8.

213. Martin's Address, January 21. 1851, pajic 3(i, give-; tb ■ (roaty li full. Ii va? approved by the president, February 19, 1822.

214. Davidson's In Unnamed Wisconsin, 04; Ellis' Elt^azer Williams, Wis. Hi>t. Col;. VIII, .330.

ti)0!^

'i '*

170 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

But to this document although certain in its sound and pointed in its statements the Bishop paid no heed. Moreover, the president by a new order permitted a third visit to Green Bay, in 1822, for the purpose of paying for the former purchase and also for attempting an extension of the cession. Althuogh the Iroquois were still in opposi- tion, the delegation was larger than before for the Stockbridges had brought in the Brothertowns and the Munsees.-^^ The party, Eleazer included, reached Green Bay September i, 1822. The granting Indians assembled to receive their deferred payment and were asked for an enlargement of the grant. The Winnebagocs refused and retired. The Menominecs finally, after much parleying in which Eleazer urged many plausible arguments and made many fulsome promises, entered into a treaty admitting the New York Indians to an occupancy in common with them of all their country without reserve — a treaty which related to nearly one-half the present state of Wisconsin and which became the source of endless trouble.-^^ With slight modifica- tion President Monroe gave liis approval March 13, 1823.

So Eleazer Williams, in September, 1822. began to reside in Wisconsin. He and the individual Oneidas in the delegation who had continued loyal to him remained the approaching" winter ni Green Bay.

The next season about one hundred and fifty Oneidas of the first Christian party 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 year after year dribbled into the new territory the fewness of their numbers was a disappointment to Eleazer and a menace to his ambitions. -^^

Eleazer's first residence in Green Bay was in the Indian Agency building made vacant by Colonel Bowyer's death. -^^ In this was a large square room suitable for school purposes and schools were what the ^Nlenominees desired. Indeed education, although not men- tioned in the treaty with them, was written between its lines. The Green Bay Indians influenced by their alliances and business dealings with the resident French had formed a high opinion of intelligence and admired the learning of the New York red men, not a few of whom could read and write. Eleazer, in furthering the negotiations

215. The Brothertowns were associated remnants of various New England tribes. The Stockbridges sold them a strip from their Southern holder. Ellis' New York In- dians, Wis. Hist. Coll. II, 416. The Mimsres were a branch of the Delawares scat- tered in consequence of having sided against the colonists in the American Revolution. In Wisconsin they are united with the Stockbridges. Davidson's In Unname.l Wis- consin, 54.

216. Ellis' Recollections, Wis. Hist. Coll. VII, 225; Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll. II, 428. The treaty in full is in Martin's Address, 38.

217. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. CoH. II, 430. 21S. Davidson's In Tnnamed Wisconsin, 202.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 171

for the treaty had kept the subject of education foremost in his loljby- ing and had promised profusely that if the New York Indians secured the foothold they sought, the "institutions of civilization should imme- diately be forthcoming. These promises made a deep impression — their non-fulfillment a still deeper impression. Suffice it to say that although a vacant room apt for school use was under Eleazer's roof, though his friend Mr. Ellis pressed vigorously upon him his plighted word, the ignorance and degradation of the untutored savages and the expectations of the Eastern societies which had furthered the removal, Eleazer completely banished the subject from his serious consideration and raised another monument against himself in the breasts of those whose religious teacher and exemplar he professed to be. 219

On March 3, 1823, Eleazer Williams married Mary or Magdalene or Madelaine Jourdain.-^o She was the daughter of Joseph Jourdain who about 1798 removed from Canada to Green Bay, and worked first for Jacob Franks the blacksmith, and later for himself.--^. Afterwards he became the blacksmith of the Indian department at the Bay.--- Joseph married the daughter of Michael Gravel whose wife was the daughter of a Menominee chief.223 All the witnesses represent the wife of Eleazer as an attractive girl, — girl, literally, for she was but fourteen years of age at the time of her marriage.--* By Mr. Trow- bridge she is called a pretty but uneducated half-breed. -2*5 Mr. Han- son speaks of her as of great personal attractions, considerable accom- plishments and prepossessing sweetness of disposition.--^ Mrs. Evans .--tates that "she was a beautiful and amiable girl whose father was French (said to be a relation of Marshal Jourdain) and whose mother was of French and Indian extraction. "227 Mr. Wheelock informs me that when he was accustomed to see her in and after 1841 she was a handsome, fine appearing woman. 228 Jn addition to her attractions of person she owned between four and five thousand acres of land on

219. Ellis' Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll. VIII, 338. A school was estai - lislied through the efforts of Mr. Ellis. See his Recollections, Wis. Hist. Coll. VII, 226. In ascribing educational initiative to Eleazer, Mr. Whitford (Early History of Education in Wisconsin, and History of School Supervision, Wis. Hist. Coll. V, 327, 354) does not give proper credit. For Eleazer's lou^'ings on the subject of the ''ilu- cation of his race, see Cotton's Tour 1, 175.

220. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 300.

221. Grignon's Recollections, Wis. Hist. Coll. HI, 253.

222. Trowbridge's Eleazer Williams Wis. Hist. Coll. VII. 414.

223. Grignon's Recollections, Wis. Hist. Coll. HI., 253. Joseph Jourdiin died May 21, 18f>6; his wife died June 13, 18l>5. Soe Mrs. Wil iains' Diary.

224. Neville's Green Bay, 221.

225. Trowbridge Eleazer William.», Wis. Hist. Cull.. VII.. 411. 22*. Hanson's The Lost Prince, SCO.

227. Evans' Story of Louis XVII., 30.

228. Personal inlervicw May ISOG, with the author.

172 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

Fox River near Green Bay.--'-* To the author of the Williams geneal- ogy Eleazer, in 1846, mentioned her as "Mary Hobart Jourdan. a dis- tant relative of the king of France from whom he has been honored with several splendid gifts and honors, among the rest a golden cross and star.''""0 In other conversation with the same person Eleazer stated that the prince de Joinville was a relative of his wife and that this relationship caused the visit, (to be hereinafter narrated) which that prince made to Eleazer in 1841 and the gifts which followed the visit. ^-'^i I make no comment upon this story except to urge that, if the prince was a relative of Mrs. Williams, he was a very ungallant young Frenchman to travel all the distance from Paris to Green Bay and not once tender his respects to his beautiful kins- woman.

Eleazer's matrimonial incident does not enhance respect for the masculine participator. At the time of the marriage he was almost three times the age of the young girl; she was then betrothed to a worthy young trader; she was not consulted as to her willingness to marry Eleazer; she was not even allowed a woman's privilege of a courtship, but was notified one morning that she need not go to school that day as she was to be married that evening to "Priest Williams." One authority finds in these unchivalrous proceedings an evidence that the bridegroom was not a high-Dorn Frenchmen. -2-

Mrs. Williams had three children — two of them daughters. These last died in infancy, one about October 15, 1841.-3-^ The son John, born about 1825,-34 ^^yag jn 1867 the captain of a steamboat on Lake Winnebago. -2^ He died in 1884 from injuries received in his busi- ness.-^° Eleazer Williams told the genealogist Dr. S. W. Williams in 1846 that his son, the said John, was then upon a visit to the king of France at the latter's request.^^'^ One can imagine the glee of the cunning Indian as he solemnly doled out his morsels of unmitigated fiction to auditors who relying upon his clerical profession implicitly believed all his lies.

Descendants of John Williams are now, it is said, residents of

229. Hanson's Tho Lost Priuee, 300; Evaus' Story of Ix)uis XVII., 30; JlcCall's Journal, Wis. Hist. Coll., XII., 185.

230. Williams' Williams Family, 96.

231. Williams' Redeemed Captive, 177.

232. Draper's Additional Notes, Wis. Hist. Coll., VIII., 367; Neville's Green Bay, 221. A view of tlie house where the wedding took pluce is at page 213 of 1he latter book. See also Baird's Indian Customs, Wis. Hist. Coll., IX., 321. Some account of the wedding is in Ellis' Recollections, Wis. Hist. Coll., VII., 227.

233. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 372.

234. Register, XIII., 95.

235. Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, III., 2738.

236. Green Bay Gazette, July, 1886.

237. Williams' Williams Family, 96.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 17:$

Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Mrs. Williams, the widow of Eleazer, was in 1874 living alone in a desolate looking cabin near Green Bay, its only embellishments a few simple articles of bead or porcupine em- broidery, and a well-executed life-size portrait in oil of Eleazer Wil- liams, on either side of which were suspended exquisitely finished en- gravings of Louis XVI. of France and Marie Antoinette. 2='^ Mrs. Williams adopted her husband's diary habit. From one of her journals penned when well along in years it appears that she took interest in her farm, produce and livestock and in the domestic affairs of her relatives and neighbors. She died in her cabin home, which was in the town of Lawrence in Brown County, July 21, iSSo.-^^

Resuming the chronological narrative: In 1824, the next year after Eleazer's marriage, he was licensed to perform the marriage ceremony for others — at that time a civil service.-^*' At about the same period he began to preach in Green Bay, using the much mod- ernized discourses of his Deerfield great ancestor.-*^ In the fall of 1825 he took his young wife to New York, where Bishop Hobart baptized and confirmed her, giving her his sirname for her middle name. Her christianization "excited almost as vivid a sensation in the fashionable world as had that of Pocahontas in English society two centuries before."-^- In the spring of 1826 at Oneida Eleazer was ordained as a deacon by Bishop Hobart, but he never attained any higher ecclesiastical rank.^*^ Returning to Green Bay he preached at the Post school-house-^* and in his flowing robe did service in the episcopalian form.-*''

But he was not so occupied with religious affairs 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 the Indians already settled, disaffected by his broken promises and his want of earnestness for their spiritual wel- fare, withdrew their confidence. The Domestic and Foreign Mis- sionary Society trusted him no longer. Finally in 1827 the Menom- inees, the tribe which had opened its lands to the New York Indians, showed its opposition to him by its attitude towards them. This was at the treaty of Butte des Morts, concluded August 11, 1827,2*8 be-

238. Martla's Uncrowned Hapsburg, 87.

239. Green Hay Gazette, July, 188G; O'Brleu's Account of EUazor Williams, in Ctiicago Times, September 18, 1886.

240. Durrie's Green Bay, 9.

241. Ellis' Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll., VIII, 321.

242. Martin's Uncrowned Hapsbuig, 92; Neville's Green Bay, 222.

243. Davidson's In Unnamed Wisconsin, 65; Letter of Mrs. Evans in Green Bay Gazette, July, 1895; Miss Martin's Reply, Green Bay Gazette, July 28, 1895.

244. Ellis' Recollections, Wis. Hist. Coll., VII., 237.

245. McCall's Journal, Wis. Hist. Coll., XII., 190. 24li. McCall's Journal, Wis. Hist. Coll.. XII.. 172.

174 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

tween the Menominees and the government. By this instrument but little regard was paid to any rights formerly given to the eastern Indians. If ill faith be imputed to the contracting parties there is much justification alleged. The arrivals from New York had been so few that it was not fair to the rapidly growing west to concede to those few an imperial territory. Moreover, it was notorious that few if any more were expected to migrate. It was poor policy to yield up in perpetuity to a few Oneidas, Stockbridges, Brothertowns, Mun- sees, a parcel of country equal to about one-half of the present state of Wisconsin.-^"

In 1829 Colonel Samuel C. Stambaugh of Pennsylvania became Indian agent at Green Bay. His advice to the Menominees was along the line of the Butte des Morts treaty — to ignore the New York Indians and sell land to the government2*8 — advice which established him in the high regard of the Menominees and in the low esteem of Eleazer who saw in the acceptance of this advice the death of his am- bitious hopes.

In 1830 commissioners appointed by the president under authority actually granted by, or plainly inferable from, the treaty of Butte des Morts appeared at the Bay, to localize, to establish boundaries for, the New York tribes which, under the treaty of 1822, were in the reservations of the Menominees. At the conference held with these commissioners Eleazer Williams appeared as the representative of the St. Regis Indians,-*'' not one of whom, so far as I can learn, had yet arrived at Green Bay as a settler. The commissioners accom- plished nothing — the Menominees, Oshkosh at their head, refused any agreement by which the New York Indians were to have separate localization. Indeed, Oshkosh denied that they had any claims at all, yet as these Indians were on the ground they could be considered as tenants at will during good behavior but not as owners or con- trollers of the soil.-^**

This was Colonel Stambaugh's opportunity. Accompanied by a dozen or more Menominees he started November 8, 1830, for Wash- ington. Upon reaching Detroit Mr, and Mrs. Williams, who had followed the party from Green Bay, were ofificially attached to it by Governor Cass, although Eleazer and the other New York Indians were opposed to the object of the errand. ^si The Menominees suc- ceeded in effecting a cession to the government of more than one-half

247. Ellis' Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll., VIII.. 341. Eleazer Williams' views of the wrongs done to the New York Indians will be found in Coltnn's Tour, I., 175 et seq.

248. Ellis' New Yorlj Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll., II., 432.

249. McCall's Journal, Wis. Hist. Coll , XII., 192.

250. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll., II., 432.

2.51. Carpenter's Sketchi of Daniel Bread, Wis. Hist. Coll., III., 56.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 175

i)f their possessions west of Lake Michigan, ignoring almost wholly the rights which about eight years before they had solemnly conferred upon their eastern brethren. This, the Stambaugh treaty,--"'- dated February 8, 1831, was not confirmed by the senate exactly as made, for the New York senators proposed to be just to the emigrants from that state to the western territory. The details of much negotiation and much heart-burning are not pertinent here. Sufifice it to say that when the vexed land question was finally settled the Stockbridges, Munsees and Brothertowns were restricted to a parcel, eight miles by twelve, on the eastern shores of Lake Wmnebago, while the Onei- das and other scattered Six Nations were settled at Duck Creek west of Fox River on a tract about twelve miles square. The senate ratified this arrangement May 17, 1838.-''"

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 narrow paddocks, the tide of white civilization was rushing 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 for wider empire should arouse his dormant hopes.

Eleazer had become not only dethroned but discredited. For quite a period he had been chaplain of the Oneidas settled at Duck Creek, upon an annual salary of two hundred and fifty dollars.-^* Yet he constantly neglected his flock. More than this, he forbade the Oneidas to receive the evangelizations of pastors of other denomina- tions.-^^ Weary of neglect, still wearier of him, the Oneidas held a council in February, 1832, to which the Indian agent, Colonel George Boyd, -5*^ was summoned and to which he invited some citizens of Green Bay. These Oneidas were chietiy of the First Christian party, whom Eleazer had bound to himself a dozen years before, in the first days of his ministrations, before the cares of this world and the deceit- fulness of riches had made him unfit to be their pastor. The assembled Indians after rehearsing their grievances against Eleazer concluded with an address to the agent, stating that they had invited him to assist them in making a final separation from Eleazer and dismissing

252. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll., II., 433 gives extracts from tlie Stambaugh treaty.

253. Ellis' New York Indians, Wis. Hist. Coll., II., 445, 448; Ellis' Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll., VIII., 343.

254. McCall's .Tournal, Wis. Hist. Coll., XII., 1S5.

255. Davidson's In Unnamed Wisconsin, 122.

2o6. Colonel Stambaugh's appointment as an Indinn Agent was refused cunfirma- ti<in anil Colonel Boyd was appointed in his room.

176 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

him entirely. They expressed their desire to repudiate him sum- marily, to warn the government of the United States, the state of New- York and all church and missionary societies against recognizing his authority to act for them, to speak in their name, or in any possible way to meddle in their afifairs. They requested Colonel Boyd to draft in triplicate an instrument to be signed by them and witnessed by him and by his invited guests, setting forth distinctly and plainly their protestations — one for the secretary of war, another for the governor of New York, the third for the proper authorities of the Episcopal church. These documents were drafted and signed and committed to the agent for delivery — an action which while perhaps neither technical, oiBcial nor ecclesiastical, fully justified the authors of His- toric Green Bay in writing of Eleazer Williams as a "disowned clergy- man of the Episcopal church,"-^" notwithstanding the assertion con- cerning him of Dr. Hawks on January i, 1853, "He is in good standing as a clergyman and is deemed a man of truth among his acquaintance and those with whom he has longest lived. "^^s

Exactly what his standing was in and about Green Bay, let Mr. John Y. Smith witness, who knew him intimately from 1828 until 1837:259

He was a fat, lazy, good-for-nothing Indian; but cunning,260 crafty, fiuitful in expedients to raise fclie wind and unscrupulous about the means of accomplishing It. During the last four or five years of my acquaintance with him, I doubt whether there was a man at Green Bay whose word commanded less confidimce than that of Eleazer Williams. His character for dishonesty, tricliery and falsehood .liecame so notorious and scandalous that respectable Episcopalians preferred charges against him to Bishop Onderdonlv.261 But as Mr. Williams was located in tlie dinccse of Wis- consin under Bishop Kemper, the bishop of New Yorlj disclaimed jurisdiition of the case; and, as Williams was there under a commission from a society in New Yorlv, Bishop Kemper disclaimed jurisdiction of the case, and In consequence of tlie-e counter-disclaimers the charges were never investigated. 202

257. Neville's Green Bay, 222. Ellis' E'eazer Williams, Wis. Mist. Coll. VIH 344.

258. Dr. Hawlvs' Introduction to Have We a Bourbon Among Us?— Putnam'.-; I., 194.

259. Smith's Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll., VI., 330.

260. Cunning is ascribed to Eleazer in one of the earliest characterizations <if him as an adult which I have seen — in August, 1830. See McCall's Journal, Wis. Hist. Coll., XII., 185.

261. Bishop Hobart had died September 32, 1830; Benjamin T. Onderdonk suc- ceeded him as bishop of New Yorls, November 26, 1830. The Rev. Jackson Kemper became in 1835 missionary bishop of Missouri and Indiana with jurisdiction through- out the Northwest. In 1859 this jurisdiction was limited by liis accepting tlie bishop- ric of Wisconsin. Morehouse's Some American Churchmen, 110, 117. As to the imwil- lingness of either Bishop Onderdonk or Bishop Kemper to be responsible for Eleazer Williams, see Hanson's Have We a Bourbon Among Us? — Putnam's, I., 200.

262. Smith's Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll., VI., 332. John Y. Smith was born in New York State February 10, 1807. He was a man of great strength of

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 177

It is not pleasant to perpetuate these charcterizations, to recall these misconducts of one long dead and as to whom I would fain apply the direction, Nil nisi bouuin de morttiis. But the truth of history is involved and the claims for Eleazer Williams depend largely upon his personal statements. Candor, therefore, compels me to say — and these pages ill perform their mission if they fail to prove — that obstinate persisting to act a false part was exactly suitable to Eleazer Williams' character,-**^ that he abounded in sly cunning, was prone to tricks, apt to exaggerate, quick to invent, utterly untruthful.

And yet, I am glad to parallel these criticisms, with the justifica- tions which Judge Morgan L. ^Martin with charcteristic clemency has uttered in favor of Eleazer Williams:

A mail roared amid savage surroxmdings. as lie was, s. ou'.d be judged by a differeut standard tban we set up for oue who lias spent his life entirely amoni; white peoijle. No one can from childhood fraternize with Indians without absorbing their characteristics to some extent, — and becoming vain, deceitful and boa'-tful. He was a I'emarkable mad in many respects, but was deeply imbued with false notions of life, and his career was a failure. He was neither better nor worse than his life-long companions and was what might have been expected from one wlio had been sent into the world with certain racial vices and whose training and associations were not calculated to better him-.26-t

Notwithstanding Eleazer's permanent residence in Wisconsn he did not sever his connection with his eastern kin. In 1835 he was at St. Regis endeavoring to obtain long delayed justice from the govern- ment for his father's services in the war of 1812.-''"' Three years later he was again in New York and visited in Buffalo ;-66 in 1841 while once more in the same state incidents occurred which demand atten- tion.

In August of that year ho celebrated with the Oneida Indians at the Castle the eighth triennial anniversary of the conversion of six hundred pagans of that tribe to the Christian faith. His part in the commemoration of an event with which in 1817 he was personally con- nected consisted in the delivery of two homilies entitled The salva- tion of sinners through riches of divine grace.'-''' After p?.riicipating in the celebration Eleazer Williams proceeded to St. Regis. There he was abiding in October, 1841, when the prince de Joinvi'le then in America was about starting upon his tour to the Mississippi.

The prince de Joinville was the third son of Louis' Philippe, then

character, thon.iigli inulity .iiid litciary culture. His statements may lie accepted without iiufstii.n. He died .May .'.. 1S74. Wight's Tlu; Old White Chnrc]), II: Dnrrio's John Y. Smith, Wis. Hist. Coll., VII., 452.

263. Ram ou Facts, 435, uses this clause witli reffroncf ti) Arrold du Tilh.

264. Martin's Narative, Wis. Hist. ro:i., XI., 390.

265. Report, January 16, 1857, on claim of Mary Ann Willian s, IIi use Com- mittee ou Military Affairs, 34th Congres-i, Third Session, No. 83.

266. Uohert.son'a Last of the Bourbon story. OH.

267. These homilies were publislicd nt Green B^iy in 1812.

178 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

king of the French, and was born August 14, 1818.-^* In 1840 he com- manded the vessel which brought from St. Helena the bones of the great emperor — that mistake of policy fatal to the house of Orleans — , and in 1841 was traveling in Canada and in the United States. He desired to familiarize himself with the history of those two countries especially in relation to the French occupation of the former country. Besides as he states in his Memoirs, "I was anxious to go, via the Great lakes to Green Bay on Lake Michigan, and then starting from Mackinaw, the old Indian Michillimackinac, to follow up the track of our officers and soldiers and missionaries who pushed on till they discovered the Mississippi. "-^^ The prince leaving his large party at Albany, New York, selected a few friends to make this trip with hmi, they thus traversing the route which the prince's father, Louis Philippe, had taken when an exile in America."^** It may well be believed that upon the beginning of his trip the prince sought the name and address of some person resident among the western Indians, ripe in years and ready with reminiscences, with whom he could converse. -"^ Cer- tain it is that upon boarding the Columbus for his tour around the lakes he avowed to Captain Shook his errand and coupled with the information an earnest request that the captain would direct him to some aged person residing along his route who might possibly have personal recollection of his father's trip, or, such failing, some person of a younger generation who might know of it by hearsay. The cap- tain whose vessel plied regularly between the ports along the lakes knew Eleazer and mentioned his name to the prince. -"-

Meanwhile Eleazer Williams had learned at St. Regis of the prince's contemplated journey. Of his desire for an expert in Indian habits, one familiar with Indian history, one who mayhap knew his father, Eleazer also learned, perhaps by letter from friends in New York, for his reputation as a scholar in Indian affairs was a score of years old, perhaps not until he reached Mackinaw. However this may be, alert for exciting episodes, he hurriedly quit St. Regis and journeying in haste, anticipated the prince and his retinue and was standing on the wharf at Mackinaw when the Columbus reached that port October 18, i84i.2"3

I summarize from The Lost Prince the account of what then

268. Priuoe de .Toiiiville's Memoir.s, 1.

269. Prince de Joinville'.s Memoirs, 207.

270. Martin's Uncrowned Hapsburg, 87.

271. Robertson's Last of the Bourbon Story, Putnam's, II. u. s., 95.

272. Martin's Uncrowned Hapsburg, 87.

273. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 370. I am inclined to disliust this date as a few days too early, but cannot yet prove it wrong. But it is certi;i Iv nor' (orr cr than the year 1854, given in Harper's Book of Facts, 033, as the tim" of thf P. iniCs Tisit to Green Bay.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 179

transpired, as ^Iv. Hanson secured the information in conversation with Eleazer Williams on December 7, 1852, and as contained in journals which somewhat later he produced for the inspection of Mr. Hanson;-"-'

While Eleazer was standing on the wharf and the prince and companions having gone ashore were viewing the sights, John Shook, the captain of the vessel, approaching Eleazer asked him if he were not going on to Green Bay, for the prince de Joinvillc had 1)een making inquiries for a Mr. Williams, and he. Captain Shook, had told the prince that such a man lived at Green Bay. Consequently, when the prince re-boarded the ship, Eleazer took passage. As the vessel proceeded. Captain Shook told the prince that Eleazer was on beard and he brought the two to an acquaintance. Quoting Eleazer's Journal: "I was siltng at the time on a barrel. The prince not only started with evident and invol- untary surprise when he saw me but there was a great agitation in his face and manner — a slight paleness and a quivering of the lip — which I could not help remarking at the time, but which struck me more forcibly afterwards, in connection with the whole train of circum- stances, and by contrast with his usual self-possessed manner. Ho then shook me earnestly and respectfully by the hand and drew me immediately into conversation." After the dinner which Eleazer po- litely declined to eat at the same private table with the prince and his suite, conversation passed between them on early French settlements in America and on the much lamented loss of Canada to France. Until late in the night, all the next morning and until three in the afternoon, when the vessel reached Green Bay, they talked together. Upon landing the prince went to the Astor House and stating that he must leave the next day or the day following, begged Eleazer to take up his quarters at the hotel. But Eleazer preferred to go to the home of his father-in-law and returned in the evening to the prince. The latter made himself alone by dismissing an attendant although the carousing of his suite could be heard in an adjoining room. The prince then stated that "he had a communication to make to me of a very serious nature as concerned himself and of the last importance to me — that it was one in which no others were in- terested, and therefore before proceeding further, he wished to obtain some pledge of secrecy, some promise that I would not reveal to any one what he was going to say." Naturally Eleazer denuirred, but finally pledged his honor not to reveal what the prince was going to say. provided there was nothing in it prejudicial to anyone, and he signed a promise to that efTect. "It was vague and general, for T would not tie myself down to absolute secrecy but left the matter

274. Hanson's Tlie L<3st Prince, 356, 304.

180 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

conditional." The prince then told Eleazer that he, the latter, was of foreign descent, was born in Europe and was the son of a king. He added, "You have suffered a great deal, and have been brought very low, but you have not suffered more, or been more degraded than my father, who was long in exile and poverty in this country; but there is this difference between him and you, that he was all along aware of his high birth, whereas you have been spared the knowledge of your origin."' The narrative proceeds: "When the prince had said this I was much overcome and thrown into a state of mind which you can easily imagine. In fact I hardly knew what to do or say, and my feelings were so much excited that I was like one in a dream and much was said between us of which I can give but an indistinct account. However, I remember I told him his communication was so startling and unexpected, that he must forgive me for being in- credulous, and that really I was 'between two.' 'What do you mean,' he said, 'by being "between two"?' I replied that on the one hand it scarcely seemed to me he could believe what he said, and on the other I feared he might be under some mistake as to the person."' The prince disclaimed any intention to trifle with Eleazer"s feelings and stated that he had ample proof of his identity. Before granting Eleazer's request that he would proceed with his disclosure the prince produced from his trunk a parchment and a "governmental seal of France, the one if I mistake not, used under the old monarchy." Eleazer relates that as soon as he knew the whole story, "the sight of. the seal put before me by a member of the family of Orleans stirred my indignation." The parchment was very handsomely written in double parallel columns of French and English. "I continued intently reading and considering it for a space of four or five hours ... it was a solemn abdication of the crown of France in favor of Louis Philippe by Charles Louis who was styled Louis XVH., king of France and Navarre with all accompanying names and titles of honor, according to the custom of the old French monarchy." As a return for this sacrifice, Eleazer was to receive a princely establishment either in France or in America and the restoration of all the private property of the royal fam.lly, or its equivalent, confiscated by the French Revolution or in any other way. After much reflection Eleazer in- formed the Prince that he could not barter away the rights pertaining to him by his birth and sacrifice the interests of his family and that he could give the prince only the answer which de Provence gave to the ambassador of Napoleon at Warsaw. "Though I am in poverty and exile I will not sacrifice my honor." "The prince upon this assumed a loud tone and accused me of ingratitude in trampling on the overtures of the king, his father, who, he said, was actuated in making the propositL-n, more by feelings of kindness and pity towards me than by any other consideration, since his claim to the French

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 181

throne rested on an entirely different basis to mine, viz., not that of hereditary descent, but of popular election. When he spoke in this strain I spoke loud also, and said, that as he, by his disclosure, 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 remained silent for several minutes. 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 awaj' the Frenchman said "Though we part I hope we part friends." Upon whatever terms they parted they never met again. .

Now around this narrative as a center divers observations cluster:

I. It seems remarkable that if the object of the prince in coming to America was to obtain this renunciation, he should go more than a thousand miles from his vessel to secure it. Eleazer Williams was in the East and the place of his sojourn was accessible, and it seems ludicrous that .for a purpose so weighty the prince and the priest should race across one-third of the span of the continent to meet in a tavern in Green Bay.

II. This astounding fact of Eleazer's history, making as it did if true his wife the blood queen of France and his son the dauphin, he never revealed to his wife and son. Twelve years after the prince visited Green Bay, when the story of this claimed disclosure had for a long while been public property, a friend of Mrs. Williams who had read in Putnam's, Have We a Bourbon Among Us? and The Bour- bon Question, related the story to her.-^^ At this time, in 1853. Eleazer had finally abandoned Green Bay and never saw his family again to explain his prolonged silence upon a fact so momentous. But one can imagine ?ilrs. Williams reflecting upon her husband's half-formed Frepch speech and the many other evidences she must have possessed of his Indian origin, and deciding that his silence to her was another evidence of his astuteness. Notwithstanding the ig- norance of his wife and son until 1853, Eleazer stated to Mr. Hanson in 185 1, "I am convinced of my royal descent; so are my family. The idea of royalty is in our minds and we will never relinquish it."-^^. »■

273. Referring to the Duke of Orleacs, father of Louis Philippe, who voted for the death of Louis XVI. Lamartine'3 Girondists, II., 330.

27G. Draper's Additional Notes. Wis. Hist. Coll., VIII., 367; O'Brien's The Mystery of His Life, in Yenowine's News, September 19, 1S86.

277. Hanson's The Ivist Prince. 346.

182 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

III. The most natural action for one whose affiliation has been attacked, whose beliefs as to his paternity and maternity have been rudely jostled, is to consult forthwith the persons he had supposed to be his parents. But no such thing did Eleazer Williams. In 1851. when his mother was summoned before de Lorimier to testify as to his parentage she learned for the first thne, and not from her son, thai he was claiming another ancestry. Strange and inexplicable mystery of reticence! A person is announced to be Louis XVII., the uncrowned king of France and Navarre, and his wife, and son, those whom all men believe to be his parents, learn of the announcement a decadr afterward from the lips of strangers! Eleazer was very careful that this story should not become v/ide-spread until his father had died or become too decrepid to wreak vengeance upon the slanderers of his family. I have no doubt that the true explanation of Eleazer's protracted silence concerning this alleged disclosure lies in the survival of his father. And in this connection I cannot but condemn those who state that Thomas Williams never claimed Eleazer to be any more than his adopted son. ^'^s This statement is grossly unjust to that ex- cellent soldier and good man. E)oubtless Thomas never did "claim" Eleazer to be his son; most fathers do not "claim" their sons — the paternity goes without claiming; but that Thomas ever denied the fatherhood of Eleazer — much as he might blush to admit it — has not a mote of evidence to sustain it.

IV. The whole story of the disclosure and requested abdication is inherently improbable. It is improbable that Louis Philippe would entrust such a mission to a youth of twenty-two; it is improbable that if Eleazer was the dauphin, and was shut off from all the world in the Wisconsin woods, and was ignorant of his magnificent ancestry and was likely never to learn it — it is improbable, I say, that even Orleans princes would deliberately seek him out and reveal to him that very thing which would make their thrones imstable, their crowned heads uneasy. Were there not pretenders enough sprinkled about Europe to be thorns in his side, that Louis Philippe should deliberately go about to discover the real heir in America, to be a still deeper sting? •

V. A noticeable circumstance about the interview between the prince and Eleazer was the extreme astonishment attributed to the lat- ter at the disclosure — an astonishment so absorbing that Eleazer neg- lected to demand from his informant the customary and. necessary proofs of his remarkable assertions. Any person supposing himself to be simply a Caughnawaga Indian would develop astonishment on learning that he is the representative of the longest royal line in Europe. Eleazer himself speaks of his timidity and bashfulness as traits of one "who

278. Historical Magazine, October, 1859, 323.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 183

had always considered himself of such obscure rank/'^^a And yet, not- withstanding this astonishment, timidity and bashfulness, it is a fact that, three years before this interview, Eleazer had claimed to be that very person concerning his idcnity with whom he is now filled with so much surprise. In or about 1838 Eleazer entered the office of George H. Haskins, editor of The Buffalo Exj^rcss and confided to him under the seal of the most profound scerecy that he, Eleazer, was not what he appeared to be but was in reality the dauphin of France, men- tioning his early idiocy, his sanative fall into Lake George and the miraculous restoration of his memory.^so When therefore the prince revealed to him the same ancestry Eleazer ought not to have mani- fested or even experienced any astonishment, but should have received the news with the dignity and reserve of one who had long become accustomed to the information. Just here it is worth while to notice that after this whisper to Mr. Haskins, and while the prince and Eleazer were chatting on Captain Shock's vessel. Eleazer told the prince that when Montcalm fell at Quebec that gallant Frenchman left his sword to an Iroquois and then expired in that Iroquois' arms; ■ that he, Eleazer, was a relative of that Iroquois, and that his, Eleazer's, mother was an Indian woman.^si Thus did this remarkable personage change his ancestors as his whim suggested; thus did he establish himself an utterly irresponsible informant.

VI. Among many slips of detail I notice one: Eleazer tells us that after talking far into the night with the prince both separated to meet the next day. But the difficulty with this is that the prince did not tarry over night in Green Bay. The prince writing twelve years afterward states that he remained there but half a day-^-, and Dr. Butler of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin prints in The Na- tion that de Joinville did not pass the night in Green Bay.-s"' To the same ef¥ect is the testimony of Mrs. Elizabeth S. Martin who met the prince upon this occasion at Green Bay and who in a hearty and genial old age still survives. She has recorded that the prince did not remain over six hours in Green Bay and that a large portion of this time was spent at the toilette in preparation for a reception and dinner at which Eleazfer Williams and Mrs. Martin among others were present. Immediately after the dinner the prince started on his eques- trian tour, tarrying for the night at the house of John McCarty, four or five miles beyond DePere-^* — instead of spending the hours at the

279. Hanson's The rx)St Prince, 362.

280. Robertson's The Last of the Bourbon Story, Putnam's, II. n. s., Of!; Drap- er's Additional Notes, Wis. Hist. Coll., VITI., 362.

281. Hanson's The Ixist Prinoo, 40.j. 404.

282. Hanson's The Lost Priufo, 403.

283. Butler's The Story of Louis XVII., in Nation, May 31, 1894, 417. 2.84. Martin's Uncrowned Hapsburg, 87, and Draper's Note in Ms.

184 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

Astor House in Green Bay begging Eleazer Williams to resign the kingdom of France.

VII. But what said the other party to this interview? Upon the receipt by the prince de Joinville of the February, 1853, number of Putnam's Magazine containing the account of the meeting, the dis- closure,and the request for abdication, the prince through his secretary addressed, from his exile home in Claremont, Surrey, England, a letter dated February 9, 1853, to the London agent of Mr. Putnam. In this communication he admitted the meeting, and the conversation with Eleazer and subsequent correspondence between the two on matters relating to the Indians, but as to the main story the prince stamped it in every particular as a work of the imagination, a fable woven wholesale, a speculation upon public credulity.^s^ Mr. Hanson, who could not well exclude this letter from The Lost Prince, made an effort to blunt its point and counteract its force, but his attempt was feeble and unsatisfactory and this denial of the prince so compre- hensive and so emphatic must be accepted as converting Eleazer's story into the wildest fiction.

VIII. But it is perhaps not astonishing to know that Eleazer Williams did not believe this story himself and so stated in at least two instances. After the appearance of The Lost Prince, Eleazer hap-- pened to meet in Baltimore Charles D. Robinson of Green Bay, a friend, and the editor of The Green Bay Advocate. Mr. Robinson who knew Eleazer and his character well, said to Eleazer, referring to this book, "I don't believe there is a word of truth in it." Eleazer broke into a hearty laugh, seeming to appreciate the point, and replied, "Nor do I, either." So, meeting his longtime friend Alexander Grig- non, Eleazer asked him if he had heard anything about the dauphin matter. "Yes, I have," was the reply, with a laugh and manner evinc- ing his total disbelief of the story. "It is not me," continued Eleazer with a disregard of grammar that would have made the young dauphin blush, "they wanted it so, and I don't care."-**' Perhaps the true in- wardness of this wholesale deception would be disclosed if Eleazer had stated definitely whom he meant by they. But, if Eleazer himself did not believe this tale, the rest of mankind — which excludes the writer of The Story of Louis XVIL— may be pardoned for sharing his incredulity.

IX. Moreover, belief by Eleazer in his identity with the dauphin would have been totally inconsistent with his conduct and admissions subsequent to 1841. Four years after the prince's visit, that is to say in 1845, Eleazer assisted in preparing a memoir of his great-grand- mother, Eunice Williams; in 1848 he preached historical sermons in

285. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 404.

286. Draper's Additional Notes. Wis. Hist. Coll., VHI., 367.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 185

Dcerfield on the anniversary of the death of his ancestor, the Rev. John Williams-s": in 1845 he gave his pedigree to the genealogist. S. W. WiUiams, M. D., stating therein that Thomas WilHams was his father, also writing, "I am highly pleased to learn that you are tracing out the genealogy of the Williams family and particularly of my grand- father, Rev. John Williams"; in October, 1846, he offered to lend his portrait of his "grandsire", the Rev. John Williams, to the uses of the contemplated genealogy; in September, 1847, he sent to the gene- alogist Williams a portrait of his "grandfather Williams" ;-88 on Janu- ary 18, 1850, in furthering the claim of Mary Ann Williams for the services of her husband in the war of 1812 Eleazer Williams swore upon oath as follows: "That I was in the secret of the United States in the war which commenced in 1812 and that I had the charge and commanded the secret corps of observation on the northern frontier during the said war; and that it was through me that my father, Thomas Williams, an Iroquois chief, was especially invited, in behalf of the general government .... to join the American stand- ard,"-89 — all these admissions of conduct, speect and oath after the prince de Joinville had solemnlj^ informed Eleazer that he was not a Williams at all but was Louis of France, the seventeenth of that name!

X. The attitude towards each other of both prince and priest sub- sequent to the interview indicates that no momentous subject was dis- cussed at Green Bay. Soon after the prince's departure Eleazer sent him a paper relating to Charlevoix and La Salle. The prince's courteous acknowledgment shows no evidence of any secret matter between them. Two years later, in the name of fiis Indian brethren, Eleazer sent through the prince to Louis Philippe for some books. The books were sent with a letter from the prince's secretary announcing the king's compliance. A delay in transit brought from the French consul general in New York a note of regret that he "was unable before to present to Mr. Williams the enclosed letter and the box of books sent by the king of the French" — the letter being the one from the prince's secretary. The matter just quoted is the foundation for the story of Eleazer receiving an autograph letter from Louis Philippe — a story of which Eleazer boasted. When asked to exhibit this autograph letter it was lost. The reply of Eleazer to the letter from the prince by the latter's secretary is certainly not penned by one who considered himself placed by the disclosures made at Green Bay "in the position of a superior" to the prince, as this extract will show:

So well pleased am I with the books, and so liisli an opinion do I entertain of your Royal Highness' benevolence and friendship as to mitxildeii me t) appear before

287. Kohertsou's The Last of tlio Itnurlion Story. I'lilnain'.'s. II. u. s., 04.

288. Williams' The Kedecmed Captive. 177.

289. Report, .January 16, lS."i7, Hoiiso Couimittee <^in Military .\ffalrs, on claim if .Mary .\nn Williams. pMiio ."), .^4th Congriess, Tl;ird S sson. No. ,s;!.

186 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

him as a suppliant] for a similar favor. For years I have beeu desirous to acquaint myself with the writings of the French, either in civil or ecclesiastical histories, ;is well as in theology. If it is not asking and intruding too much upon your Roy;il Highness' goodness may I hope that lie will give a favoral)le hearing to my humble request.290

It should be stated parenthetically that whenever Eleazer 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 mis- sives from French bishops and cardinals and one from the secretary of Napoleon III., all enquiring about his history. Like the atttograph letter from Louis Philippe they had all disappeared.-''^

Eleazer's journals were as useful to his purpose as his mysteriously disappearing documents. These journals consisted of sheets loosely stitched together so that the insertion of leaves containing new matter or the re-writing of old matter was an easy task. Indeed, for some periods of his life there are preserved two journals dififering in details of events-^- — one or the other or both evidently prepared after the incidents recorded and to serve some purpose. Eleazer could prodtice journals as he did scars.

XL A curious phenomenon is to be observed about the expres- sions and reflections attributed to the prince dvtring his interview with Eleazer — that they are identical in sentiment, that they are often clothed in exactly the same language, with ideas and opinions contained in the journals of Eleazer, of dates long anterior to 1841. Especially is this true as to the remarks concerning the aid rendered by France to America during our revolution and concerning the connection be- tween the French revolution and the misfortunes of Louis XVI.-^-' This is easily explicable. When Eleazer in 1848, either alone or witli the aid of a friend was stealthily launching his imposture, he found in his own early meditations satisfactory material for the made-up con- versations of the prince with himself. About these were grouped the other incidents — the prince's expression of astonishment at see- ing the Bourbon lineaments on Eleazer's face, the htmiility which wotild not permit the priest to dine at the same table with the prince, the night meeting at the Astor House, the revelation, the bribe, the indignant rejection, the over-night reconsideration, the re- newal of the refusal, the final parting — all clustered into a sensa- tional, if not into a coherent, narrative.

XII. It need not elicit surprise that Eleazer Williams as long

200. Robertson's The Lust of the Bourbon Story, Putnam's, II. n. s., OH. 291. Robertson's The Last of the Boiu-bon Story. Putnam's, II, n. s., !>(): Han- son's The Ixist Prince, 355.

202. Robertson's The Last of the Bourbon Story, Putnam's, II, n. s.. 00.

293. Rolifitson's The Last of the Bourbon Story, Putnam's. II. n. s., 95.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 187

ago as TS38, had declared himself the dauphin. He enjoyed the privi- lege not accorded to those who live a century after the episode in the Temple, of existing in the age that produced dauphins. Men far less acute and cunning than Eleazer had palmed themselves off upon the public as the heir of St. Louis, had been the objects of anxiety and solicitude, had even engaged tlie attention of the daughter of Louis XVL While dauphin-meteors had been shooting athwart the Euro- pean firmament, while one at least was still shining with tinsel lustre, should not one pretender glitter with bright effulgence in the western horizon? Should not Eleazer Williams be that pretender?

After the visit of the prince to Green Bay. but little in the life of Eleazer requires notice for several years. He was almost entirely disassociated from the Indians but was much occupied in pressing against the government claims growing out of their removal to the western country. In 1846 the Society for the Propagation of the Gos- pel among the Indians and others in North America appropriated money for his support as a missionary, but after two years this stipend was withdrawn, the result not justifying its continuance.-'' ' In 1850 he went east to profTer his services for the removal of the Seneca In- dians from Indian Territory to the upper waters of the Mississippi. His offer was declined. Not returning to his family-*'" he took up his residence at St. Regis, where he commenced a school and where he had some kind of missionary appointment from the Diocesan Society of New York and from the Boston Unitarian Society.-'-"^ Upon the recommendation of his neighbors the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel renewed its appropriation, but in 1853 this was withdrawn, owing to his protracted absences from duty.-^'^

His home was on the St. Regis reservation for the remainder of his life, although he frequentlj^ traveled. It was in the autumn of 1851. while on a journey, that Mr. Hanson, who had read of the claim for Eleazer in The New York Courier and Enquirer, made his acquaint- ance.-^^ Through Mr. Hanson's energetic espousal Eleazer was con- verted from a secret, surreptitious pretender into an open declarator of his royal position. Under Mr. Hanson's tuition he became a genu- ine monarch, issued manifestos, signed L. C. to his documents, re-

294. Huntoou's Eleazer Williams, 259.

29.5. Before leaving Wisconsin Eleazer left wiih Mrs. Daniel Krown of Sheboygan a painting to be kept by ber until he should order It sent to liini. He c'aimed it was a picture of Louis XVI. and Mrs. Brown says there is a strong likeness between the face in the painting and that of Eleazer Williams. The picture is now owned by Mrs. Crown's daughter, Mrs. I. H. Jones of Shebo.vgan. Mrs. Brown, who was born August 22, 1809, is still living. Letter from Mrs. Brown, May 12, 1896: Wiglit's The Old Wliite Church, 9.

290. Kobertson's The Last of the BourlK>n Story. 98.

297. Huntoon's Eleazer Williams, 260.

298. Hanson's The I>ost Prince. 836.

188 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

ceived notes phrased Your Most Gracious Majesty-^^ and promised his friends passage to France in a national ship when he should ob- tain his own."*'*^

T have said that at first Eleazer was a secret pretender. I mean that the first obtrusion of himself as a dauphin was in private ways, by per- sonal interview, by anonymous letter, by fictitious signature. In- stances uf his .'iiothod h.'ae 1 cen given. Instances fvrther follow: D- Vinton writes that in August, 1844, while he and Eleazer were in the parlor of the residence of Mrs. O. H. Perry at Newport, the writer's attention was attraced by the gesticulations and other antics of Eleazer who was examining a volume of engravings and accidentally 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 paralysis had seized him. . . Point- ing 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 reverse. ^•'i From this incident those who did homage to Eleazer 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, Eleazer was en- gaged longer than has been believed in working up his imposture. It should be added that Eleazer 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, Eleazer greatly excited, and the ejaculation "Good God, I know that face, it has haunted me through life."^o- I have no doubt that if the matter could be thoroughly ferreted, it would be found that the half-breeds Skenon- dogh and Eleazer arranged the story and provided for the affidavit which was taken so formally on June 14, 1853, in which Skenondogh is made to swear that he was present at Ticonderoga in 1795 when two Frenchmen delivered an imbecile and sickly boy to Thomas Wil- liams and that Eleazer was that boy."''^ The story of the taking of the affidavit and of the actions of Eleazer — for by a curious coincidence he happened to be in New York at the time — before the notary, all display the artful and cunning methods of an artful and cunning man."<>*

Another way in which he brought himself into notice by the under-

2il!l. l£obertson"s The Last of the Bourbon Stor.v, I'lilnani's. II, n. s., '.)\).

:\W. Letter, April 6, 1896, from George Sheldon of DeerfielJ, Mass.

.■?01. Vinton's Louis XVII. and Eleazer Williams, Putnam's II, n. s. oiU.

3C2. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 354; Hanson's Have We a Bourbcin Among- Us?

Putnam's, I, 209; Huntoon's Eleazer Williams, 283.

303. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 177, 465.

304. Vinton's Ix)uis XVII. and Eleazor Williams, I'utiiam's, 11. a. a. 336.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 189

ground plan is exhibited by the following letter written under a false name to a Mr. Reed of Buffalo in August, 1850:

It so happened tbat I was at the Eagle Hotel in I'liilaiielpb':' "heu viu and Mr. W'illiams (the dauphin of France) were there. Curii.sity, as well as having taken an interest in the history of the unfortunate Prince, has led me tj aldtcS. yoi an I ask you to have the goodness to inform me if you are in possession of any historical facts in relation to this wonderful man.

Aonther instance of the same kind a little earlier in time: There appeared in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review for July, 1849, what seemed to be an anonymous review of a book entitled History of the Dauphin, Son of Louis the Sixteenth of France, by H. B. Ely, or as given in the Table of Contents, N. B. Ely. The review includes quite an account of Eleazer Williams and the different proofs of his royal extraction and is so much in the style of Eleazer that Mr. Robertson was fully justified in suspecting his authorship. When it is added that no such book ever existed as Mr. Ely purported to review and that no such man as H. B. Ely or N. B. Ely ever again arose during the Williams controversj^ although sought for and asked to present himself, enough has been said to expose the guileful Indian hand of the hero of this paper."'^-*

The Bellanger incident was a fiction of Colonel Henry E. East- man of Green Bay. In or after 1847, Colonel Eastman, a lawyer and a prominent citizen, was an intimate and confidential friend of Eleazer Williams. Interested in French history and in the decay of Bourbon power Colonel Eastman wrote a romance based on the misfortunes of young Louis and made Eleazer Williams the chief character. The manuscripts from time to time were loaned to him to read at his leisure. Unknown to the author the parts were copied and returned. An account of the death in New Orleans of the faithful adherent. Bel- langer, who had brought the dauphin to America and placed him in the charge of Thomas Williams, was one of the features of this ro- mance, as it is one of the features of Mr. Hanson's romance. ^"6 To the amazement of Colonel Eastman, his story with the addition of some affidavits and other special proofs, not necessary to his imaginary tale, appeared in Putnam's Magazine. Of course Elea- zer's Journal contained the matter, of course it was exhibited to Mr. Hanson and is quoted from at length. ''-O' The information of the

305. Kobertson's The Last of the Bourbon Story, rutuam's, II. n. s, 98.

306. Smith's Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. C!oll. VI. 337. Colonsl Eastman his been mayor of Green Bay and was lieutenant-colonel of thL' Second Wiseondn caralry from November, 1861, until July, 18&1. His statements as 1 1 this romance are in part confirmed by the recollection of Senator Timothy <). Howi- of Wise nisin and in great lueasure liy the recollection of Colonel James II. Howe of Chiiago.

307. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 378. The journal is dated March 10, 1S48. Mr. Uobertson found two editions of the journal of this date, exhiliiting impotant dffer- CQCes. Kobertson's The I.ast of the Bourbon Story, Ptitnam's, II. n. s. 96.

190 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

death of Bellanger was conveyed to Eleazer, the Journal states, by letter from Thomas Kimball of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The name of Mr. Kimball does not appear again in Eleazer's Journal, the orig- inal Kimball letter was never produced for inspection and Mr. Han- son, although he went to New Orleans and secured some very incon- sequential affidavits, was obliged to confess that he could find no trace of Bellanger.-os

In 1853 in Februarj-, Mr. Hanson published in the second number of Putnam's Magazine the sensational paper. Have ]Vc a Bourbon Among Us? which is said to have added twenty thousand names to the subscription list of that magazine. =**''' Immediately upon the arrival of the article in England, appeared the prince de Joinville's emphatic denial of its most salient feature, and Le Ray de Chaumont's correc- tion of Hanson so far as the latter had mentioned his father. As soon as the first article appeared attention was directed where nat- urally Eleazer's attention ought to have been first directed — to his mother, Mary Ann Williams. Of course much excitement was aroused and of course much agitation would find its way to, and afifect, the aged mother. On March 28, 1853, an affidavit in English, prepared by Father Marcoux, was presented to and executed by her. In plain language she established for herself the doubtful honor of being Elea- zer Williams' mother — thus confirming the statement which she had made to de Lorimier in 1851 and confirming the oath of Eleazer Wil- liams himself in January, 1S50. As this affidavit was widely published and was a death blow to Eleazer's claims there was need to counteract it. This was attempted by means of an affidavit in Iroquois sworn to by Mary Ann Williams on July 8, 1853. As I do not rest my judgment concerning Eleazer's claims upon either of these affidavits I do not deem it necessary to publish them.^io As to the latter, however, I wisli to make two or three observations.

I. So far as the affiant had aught to do with it, it is the work of a person considerably over ninety years of age who was so distracted by the opponents and adherents of her son that she lost what little strength of intellect a monagenarian might have otherwise had. This remark applies though in less degree to the affidavit of Maixh 28, 1853.

II. The affidavit of July 8, 1853, was written by the person most interested in its contents — Eleazer Williams. This is proved by the fact that the original draft of the document in his handwriting Avith erasures and interlineations and showing how gradually it was built up, was found among his papers after his death, and by the further

308. Hanson's Tlie Lost Prince. 430.

.'{09. Huntoon's Eleazer Wiliiam-, rS'J. Si'o Kd tir'..; Easy <'liar. la fj r .-. .Tunc, 1882, 14S.

310. They are printed in Hanson's The Lnst I'rlnio. 432. 4.35, and in Snidi s Eleazer Williams, Wis. Hist. Coll. VI. .".IT. 321.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 191

fact that the document contains those improvements in the Iroquois language which Eleazer had many years before invented. ^^^^ Eleazer must therefore stand convicted of preparing for the signature and oath of his feeble and distracted mother a document which involved what he knew was a falsehood, a document "indicating an apparent purpose to steal the desired avowal of his adoption from his mother without making too broad an issue." Notwithstanding the duress of her son's presence when she executed the instrument she evinced surprise that he should claim to be any other than her own son and, in the opinion of the justice who took her oath, did not know the meaning of the word adopted which Eleazer had inserted after his name, and did not intend to say what she was made to say.^^-

III. This affidavit, written in Iroquois, was translated into Eng- lish and Mr. Hanson corrected the translation. "^^ What shall be said of this affidavit as speaking the sentiment of Mary Ann Williams, when we reflect that it was signed by the mark of a woman close on to one hundred years of age, that it was prepared in Iroquois by an unscrupulous and scheming man interested in upholding a petty noto- riety and that its translation was corrected by that unscrupulous schemer's most ardent and indefatigable lieutenant? And yet not- withstanding this Eleazer did not dare formulate such language as would make his mother deliberately deny her child, but by indirec- tion, by insertion of the word "adopted" in two places and by denial of unimportant details he concocted a document which has not helped his case in any particular but exposes him, and I fear, Mr. Hanson, to great odium.

One more incident in Eleazer's life before his leaving it: Frequent mention has been made of the attempts to secure from the government indemnity for the losses sustained 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 histor3\ On April 17, 1858, the House Committee on Military Afifairs reported on the claim of "Eleazer Wil- liams, heir of Thomas Williams,'" finding the latter's distinguished and unrecompensed military services and his great pecuniary sacrifices. They 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 the said Thomas Williams." Representative Pendleton of Ohio, an .u'uto and sagacious lawyer, reported these findings and that they were "abundantly proven by the evidence."-'^' And so, witliin five months

311. Ellis' EleaziT Williams. Wis. Hist. ('<ill. VIII. 350.

.■512. Robertson's Tlie Last of tiie Bouibun ."^laiy. Pntiiain's, II, n. s. Hi'.

.■'.l.S. Hanson's The Lost Prince, 4.'!4.

.".U. Ueport No. 3(1.3, 35tli Congro.s. First soslon.

192 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

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 ac- cept.

He died August 28, iSsS,^!-* in great poverty, suffering 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 habits of domstic economy were such as might under the circumstances be alike ex- pected in one reared as a prince or a savage; and his household pre- sented 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 furniture save a scanty supply of broken chairs and invalid tables; boxes filled with books, the gifts of friends, lay stored away in corners; his dining-table, unmoved from week to week and covered with the broken remains of former repasts and his pantry and sleeping-room disordered and filthy, left upon the visitor an oppressive feeling of homeless solitude that it was impos- sible to efiface from the memory."3i7

The occupant of this ill-kept abode, his skin turned to a dark red surely betokening his Indian descent,^!^ his family a thousand miles away and wilfully deserted by himself, his hopes and ambitions turned to decay and ashes, crept scant honored into a lonely grave. His son erected a monument to his memory.

It must have been observed that this paper has considered the dauphin question in connection with Eleazer Williams entirely from the American standpoint. Granted that certain actions of the French revo- lutionary government in 1795, granted that certain actions of the restored Bourbon kings, indicated a doubt of the death of young Louis in the Temple; granted that the frail child did not, as a matter of history, die in 1795, that his escape was accomplished, that he received safe asylum in Italy, in England, in America even, yet still Eleazer Williams was not he. Hervagault, Persat, Fontolive. Mathurin-Bru-

315. Register XIII, 95: Evans' Story of Ljuis XVII, 90; Smith's Elcazor Will- iams, M^is. Hist. Coll. VI, 337; Egeland's Dauphin in Green Bay, Door County Advo- cate, December 22, 189-1; Huntoon's Eleazer Williams, 268. Mrs. Williams' Diary however malies the date four days earlier: "August 24, 185S, Mr. Williams died." As she was not with him at his death and the entry was evidently made s.imewhat later than the event I am inclined to accept the date in the text.

316. An account of his funeral is in Huntoon's Eleazer Williams, 268.

317. Williams' Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen, Introduction, page 13.

318. Letter, May 2, 1896, cf Edward H. Williams, Jr.: Butler's Tlie Story of Louis XVII., The Nation, May 31, 1894, 417.

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 193

neau, Ojardais, ]\Ieves, Richemont, Naundorfif, any one of the 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 born more than three years later than Louis, at a place removed three thousand miles from the rock of Louis' cradle, of a parentage not Capetian and Aus- trian, but Mohawk and Massachusetts, who never heard the eastern wash of the Atlantic waves and who never elbowed royalty save on Lake Michigan and at Green Bay.

It must also have been observed that this paper, although brought into late being as a consequence of The Story of Louis Xl'H. of France has made but scant mention of that effort. Purposely so. Notwithstanding the author's advertisement that her volume is a "new solution of a historical mystery", notwithstanding the compli- ment of Professor Andrew D. White, ex-minister of the United States to Russia, that the book is "beautiful and interesting" and "must take the leading place in the literature of the subject" and that "it makes out a strong case"^^^ one cannot avoid wondering whether the author de- sires to be taken seriously, whether she does not intend a huge gro- tesque. But admitting the grave purpose,320 this must be said: In the pages devoted to Eleazer Williams there is little that has not been condensed, errors and all, from The Lost Prince; the book abun- dantly deserves the characterization of The Athenaeum, "exceptionally tedious and ill-written compilation" ;32i th^t portion relating to Eleazer Williams overflows with statements for which no proof is ten- dered, overflows with statements for which no proof can be ten- dered. Two or three specimens of the inaccuracies must be pre- sented: Mrs. Evans states that Thomas Williams' mother was stolen by the Indians from Deerfield in 1704^22 — Thomas Williams' mother was not born until after 1714.323. Again, it is related that certain French travelers visited in 1794 in Stockbridge "Mr. Williams, a man of social and political importance, founder of Williams College. "^-■' The founder of Williams College, Colonel Ephraim Williams, died Sep- tember 8, 1755,3-^ nearly forty years before the Frenchmen visited Stockbridge. Mrs. Evans may be excused for this error, for she bor- rowed it from Mr. Hanson. ^26 Onte more: the world is gravely in- formed that the prince de Joinville was "the eldest son of King Louis

319. Advertisement in The Athenaeum, Feb. 3, 1S94.

320. The Atlantic Monthly (June 1S94, S52) seems to think her serinus.

321. The Athenaeum Xo. 3458, February 3, 1894. p. 142.

322. Page 15.

323. Thomas Williams' mother's mother was but eight years obi in 1704. Will- iams' Robert Williams, 15.

324. Evans' Story of Louis XVII, 41, 42.

325. Everett's Address, Orations and Speeches. 11. 231.

326. Hanson's Have Wo a Bourbon Among Us? Putnam's, I, 211.

194 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

Philippe," and that when he arrived in America in 1841 "one of his first enquiries was whether a man named Eleazer Williams was living among the Indians of Northern New York."^-'^ These two clauses rest on equal authority, the latter on Eleazer Williams^-^ and the former on nothing. Surely Mrs. Evans should have known that while she was writing her book in England a son of Louis Philippe, elder than de Joinville, was then living in Europe. The due de Nemours, the sec- ond son of Louis Philippe died aged eighty-one years June 25, 1896.^29 Let us read together IMacaulay's criticism of Mr. Croker: "We do not suspect him of intentionally falsifying history. But of this high literary misdemeanor we do without hesitation accuse him — that he has no adequate sense of the obligation which a writer, who professes to relate facts, owes to the public. We accuse him of a negligence and an ignorance analogous to that crassa negligentia and that crassa ignorantia on which the law animadverts in magistrates and surgeons even when malice and corruption are not imputed. We accuse him of having undertaken a work which, if not performed with strict accuracy, must be very much worse than useless, and of having performed it as if the difference between an accurate and an inaccurate statement was not worth the trouble of looking into the most common book of refer-

ence.

"330

It is difficult accurately to characterize the Rev. Mr. Hanson in his capacity as the defender and promoter of Eleazer Williams and his claims. As the grand nephew of Oliver Goldsmith^^i jig ^i^y ^g ex- cused if he was credulous and simple-minded. But so much imposi- tion was practiced by Eleazer Williams, so many marvelous tales he related, so many documents he boasted of but never exhibited, so many discrepancies are palpable in his journals, so many statements unsub- stantiated, that I wonder the uttermost extreme of gullibility did not become suspicious. That Mr. Hanson was an enthusiastic and loyal advocate; that he wrote A-igorous, elegant and exciting English; that his enthusiasm became contagious, producing adherents who are still believers; that he infected other reputable ministers whose arguments and evidence were superficially powerful — all these things are admitted. Whether Mr. Hanson's investigations and probings left him still in his heart a believer in the statements set out in The Lost Prince, whether at his death""^ three years after the book was printed he

327. Evans' Story of Louis XVII, 32.

328. Hanson's Have We a Bourbon Among Us? Putnam's I, 196; Hanson's The Lost Prince, 339.

329. Review of Reviews, August, 1890, 152.

330. ,See Macaulay's Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, II, IS, (New York, 1878)

331. Putnam's, II. n. s., 127, for July, 1868.

332. Mr. Hanson died 1857; Mr. Colton died March 13, 1857; Dr. Hawks died September 26, 1866 and Dr. Vinton died September 29, 1872; Rov. Charles F. Rob- ertson, wlio was consecrated bishop of Missouri October 25, 1838. died May 1, 1886

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 195

looked back with satisfaction and self-approval upon his volume. I have no means of knowing. Certain it is, however, that in his writings on the subject now in hand Mr. Hanson was often intemperate and not always fair. Notice in his attack upon Dr. S. W. Williams, the fol- lowing, italics and quotation marks included :■'•'"

But Dr. Williams contradicts himself in a manner which shows how little reliance can be placed on any of his recollections. On p. 174334 we are told by him Mr. Williams never made the ' most diataut allusion" to "his ever having had an interview with the Prince de Joinville;" and lo! on p. 177 we read, " He frfqiicnth told me and my family that this risit fro ii the Prinnc was in consequence of his rehitinnsbii) to his wife, and that he received his presents from the samp cans ■. His stories here were much at variance with those iu the magazine." I wi ndor witli what Dr. W'illiams' stories are at variance.

It is not to the credit of Mr. Hanson, but it is strict justice to the memor}' of Dr. S. W. Williams — a most exemplary and truthful man^s" — to write that the former has deliberately misquoted the latter. On page 174 Dr. Williams is recording a single interview with Eleazer Williams — the interview in 1846 in which the latter gave Dr. Williams the genealogical particulars quoted in this paper — and Dr. Williams states that at that interview Eleazer gave him the "notice of his family, without ever making the most distant allusion to his royal descent or to his ever having had an interview with de Joinville." This is not contradictory of page 177 — Dr. Williams was to careful to make such an error. Mr. Hanson was not fair to accuse him of it.^^^

This is but one instance — ex uno discc oinnes. I am constrained to believe that in his loyalty to the royal pretensions of Eleazer Wil- liams, in his pettish, even angry, hostility to opposing views, in his surendering the calm historical judicial sense to the acrimoniousnes? of the advocate, 33' Mr. Hanson became uncandid and disingenuous. From that criticism his method cannot escape; while, with a full knowledge of Eleazer Williams, his character, his disposition, his racial propensities, Tlic Lost Prince with its formidable array of emptv statements can be pricked and proven a vain bubble.

WILLIA^I WARD WIGHT.

333. Hanson's The Lost Priuce, 442.

334. Of Dr. Williams' edition of The Redeemed Captive.

335. See his life and character in Huntington's S. W. Williams, II, 38!).

336. Mrs. Evans is guilty of like unfairness, Story of Louis XVII., So.

337. For a liUe charge against Mr. Hanson sec Simms' Iroquois Bourbon, South- ern Quarterly Review, July. 1853, page 153

APPENDIX I.

ALPHABETICAL, LIST OF WORKS CITED.

1. Allibone, Samuel A., Dictionary of English litcratuie and Biiiisli and Amer-

ican authors. 3 v. Phila. 1859, 1870, 1871.

2. Athenaeum, The. London. February 3, 1894, page 111.

3. Atlantic Monthly, The. Boston. June, 1894. Vol. LXXIII. 852.

4. Baird, Elizabeth T. Indian Customs and Early Recollettions. In Wiscons-in

Historical Collections, IX, 303.

5. Baird, Henry S. Early History and Condition of Wisconsin. With notes liy

Lyman O. Draper. In Wisconsin Historical Collections, II, 72.

6. Baker, C. Alice. Eunice Williams. In History and Proceedings of Pf;curatuck

Valley Memorial Association, I, 18.

7. Baxter, James P. The pioneers of New France in New England. All any, 1S9I.

8. Beauchesne, A. de. Louis XVII. His Life — His Suffering— His Deatli.

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9. Bennett, F. S. M., secretary of the Bishop of Chestei', Enshiiul. Lett r.

March 21, 1896.

10. Boston Daily Journal. October 17, 1848.

11. Brown, Cordelia. Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Letter, May 12, 1891!.

12. Butler, James Davie. The Story of Louis XVII. of Fran e. In The Nalidi;

Vol. 58, No. 1509, May 31, 1894, 417.

13. Canniff, William. The Medical Profession in Upper Can da. 1783-185).

14. Carpenter, Stephen H. Sketch of Daniel Bread. In Wisconsin Historical

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15. Catalogue of the publications of the United States, 1774-1S81. Made hy Ben.

Perley Poore. Washington, 1885.

16. Catalogue of the Wisconsin State Historical Society, Vol. V.

17. Chaumont, Le Ray de. Letter. In Putnam's Monthly Magazine. July, IS.'i:!.

Vol. II, 117.

18. Christian Journal and Literary Register, New York, February, 1817.

19. Colton, Calvin. The Problem of the Lost Prince. In Pntnrm's Monthly M: .g-

azine, February, 1854. Vol. Ill, 202.

20. Colton, Calvin. Tour of the American Lakes and Ami ng the Indians of tl e

Northwest Territory in 1830. 2v. London, 1S33.

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22. Da Costa, Benjamin F. The Story of St. Regis's Bell. In Galaxy, Jiinuary,

1870. Vol. IX, 124.

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24. Davidson, John N. In Unnamed Wisconsin. Milwaukee, 1895.

25. Dean, James, Hanover, New Hampshire. Letter, Novembei' 12, 1774.

26. Do Qulncey, Thomas. Autobiographic Sketches. Boston, IS'S.

27. Detroit Gazette. July 28, 1820; July 13, 1821.

28. Draper, Lyman C. Additional Notes on Eleazer Williams. In Wisconsin His-

torical Collections, VIII, 353.

ELEAZER WILLIAMS. 197

20. Dunie, Daniel S. A Sketch of Jolin Y. Smith. In Wise n-i i IHsorcal Collections, VII, 452.

30. Dunie. Daniel .S. Green Bay for Two Huiidel Ycais. 1G39-1830. Mailis n. n. .1.

31. Dwiglit, Timothy. Travels in New England and New Yorli. 4v. New Haven.

1821, 1822.

32. Egeland, Elizabetli. Tlie Daupliin in Green Bay. In Door County Advocate.

December 22, 1894.

33. Ellis, Albert G. Filly-four Years' UecoUectiuns of Men and Events in Wis-

consin. With Introduction by Lyniau C. Draper. In Wisconsin His torical Collections, VII, 207.

34. Ellis, Albert G. Recollections of Rev. Elcazm- Williams. lu Wi-coiisiu His-

torical Collections, VIII, 322.

35. Ellis, Albert G. Some Account of the Advent of the New Yo k Indians into

Wisconsin. In Wisconsin Historical Collections, II, 415. 30. Evans, Elizabeth E. Letter In Green Bay Gazette, July, ISO."..

37. Evans, Elizabeth E. The Story of Louis XVII. of France. Lon<loii. 18;i3.

38. ?:verett, Edward. Address Before the Adelphic Union of Williams C.jllig-,

August 16, 1837, entitled Supeiioi- and Popular Kduc.it oi. In F.ve ett'.s Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions, Vol. II., 206. Boston, 1853.

39. Fessenden, John. A sermon preached to the First Congregational Society in

Deerfield, before Indians supposed to be the descendants of Eunice Will- iams, August 27, 1837. Greenfield, 1837.

40. Francis, John W. Old New York, or Reminiscences of the Past Sixty Years.

N. Y. 1866.

41. Green, Samuel A. Groton During the Indian Wars. Groton, 1883.

42. Green Bay Gazette, July, 1886.

43. Grignon, Augustin. Seventy-two Years' Recollections of Wise nsin. In Wis

consin Historical Collections, III, 197. 44 Hammond, Mrs. L. M. History of Madison County, New York. Syracuse. 1872.

45. Hanson, John H. Have Wo a Bouiboii Among Us? Introdueti ms by Fran.is

L. Hawks. In Putnam's Monthly Magazine, February, 1853. Vol. I. 194.

46. Hanson, John H. The Bourbon Question. In Putnatn's Monthly Magazine,

April, 1853. Vol. I, 442.

47. Hanson, John H. The Lost Prince: Facts Tending to Prove the Identity of

Louis XVII. of France and the Rev. Eleazer Williams. New York, 1854

48. Harper's Book of Facts. N. Y., 1895.

49. Historical Magazine, New York. October, 1859, p. 323.

50. History of the Dauphin. In United States Magazine and Democratic Review,

July, 1849, 11; Reviewing, History of the Dauphin, Son of Loiii.< XVI. of France, by H. B. Ely, or N. B. Ely.

51. Holland, Josiah G. History of Western Massachusetts. 2v. Springfield, 185;>.

52. Hotten, John C. Original Lists of Emigrants to America. London, 1874.

53. Hough, Franklin B. A History of St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties. New

York. Albany, 1853.

54. House of Representatives' Report, No. 83, 34th Congress, Third Session

Made January 16, 1857 by William R. Sapp.

55. House of Representatives' Report, No. 303, 35th Congress, First Session.

Made April 17, 1858, by George H. Pendleton.

56. Hoyt, Epephras. Antiquarian Researches: Comprising a History of the In-

dian Wars in tlic Country Bordering Connecticut River and Parts .\d jacent. Greenfield, December, 182 J. ,^7. Huntington. Helen M. Life of Stephen W. Williams.' In Memorial Biogiaphie.-, New F.nL'land TTistoiic Genealogical Society, II, 389.

198 ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

ns. Hiintoon, Daniel T. V. Eleazer Williams. In Mimnial I'.iogiapbios, Ni'W Kiig- land Historic Genealogical Society, III, 252.

59. Joinville, Frangois P. P. L. M. <rOrle.in^, prii.ce de. Mem .iis. 'IT mslate,!

by Lady Mary Loyd. New York and Ixindon, 18'.>5.

60. Jones, Artliur E., Montreal. Letter, May 15, 1896.

61. Kinzie, Juliette A. Wau-bun, the "early, day" iu the Northwest. Cliicago,

1857.

62. Lamartino, Alphonsc de. History of tlie Gir.mdi ts. Zw Ne>v yurl<, 181s. C.'^. Lamb, Mary J. History of the City of New York. 2v. New York and

Chicago, 1877.

64. Lettres editiantes et cm-ieuses (omenmt I'As-l-, IWfrqu' et lAme iqne.

Vol. I. Paris, 1838.

65. Longfellow, Heniy W., editor. Poems of Places— America. Boston, 1879.

66. Longmeadow centennial. Proceedings of the centennial celebrati(in of the

incorporation of the town of Li-mgnieadow, October 17, 1883.

67. Lost Dauphin of France. In Milwaukee Sentin.l, December 29, 1891, copied

from' Green Bay Advocate.

68. McCall, James. Journal of a visit to Wisconsin in 1830. In Wiseonsin

Historical Collections XII., 170.

69. Marsh, Cutting. On the Stockbridges. In Wisconsin Historical Collections.

IV., 299.

70. Martin, Deborah B. Reply to Mrs. Evans. In Green P.ay Ga/.itte. Ju'y 28,

1895. 73. Martin, Elizabeth S. The Uncrowned Ilapsburg. In The Ladies' Repos- itory, February, 1874. 86.

72. Martin, Morgan L. Address liefere the State Historical Society of Wis-

consin, January 21, 1851. Green Bay, 1851.

73. Martin, Morgan L. Narrative. In Wisconsin Historical Collections, XI.,

385.

74. Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 1869-70.

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1896.

76. Morehouse, Frederic C. Some American Churchmen. Milwaukee. 1892.

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don, 1861.

78. Neal, Daniel. History of the Puritans, 2v. N. T. 1843, 1844.

79. Neville, Ella H.; Martin, Sarah G.; Martin, Deborah B. Historic Green

Bay, 1634-1840. Green Bay, 1893.

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Boston 1891.

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4 V. Albany 1849-1851.

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by E. B. O'Callaghan, M. D. 10 v. Albuny 1855-1808.

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ham, 1787.

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18, 1886, and under title "The Mystery of Life," in Yenowine's News, September 19, 1886.

86. Parkman, Francis. A Half-Century of Conflict, 2 v. Boston 1894.

87. Parkman, Francis. Montcalm and Wolfe, 2 v. Boston 1894.

88. Parkman, Francis. The Old Regime in Canada. Boston 1891.

89. Penhallow, Samuel. History of the Wars of New England With the Eastern

Indians. Philadelphia, 1859,

HIS FORERUNNERS, HIMSELF. 199

DO. I'ociimtuck Valley Memorial Asso<iutu>n. Uistory aud Proceedings. Vol. 1. 1890.

91. Putnam's Magazine. Editorial. July, 18ti8. Vol. II. n. s. 126.

92. Ram, James. A Treatise on Facts. 4tU Am. Edition. New York, 1890.

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May 18, 1896.

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95. Review of Reviews, New York, August, 1890. page 152.

90. Robertson, Charles F. The Last of the liourbon Story, lii I'uinani's .Ma;;- azine, July, 1868. II. n. s. 90.

97. Scribuer's .Monthly Magazine. February, 1895, p. 247. "Some Old Letleis."

98. Senate Report; No. 311, 31st Congress, Second Session. Made February

20, 1851, by John P. Hale.

99. Sergeant, Johu, Stockbridgo. Letter. Oitcber li4, 1743.

100. Sliea, Johu G. Letter on Eleazer Williams. In American Hstoric^l Rec-

ord, July, 1872, 300.

101. Sheldon, George. History of Deerfield, Hi3ti-188G. 2v. 18'.'5-«.

102. Sheldon, George, Deerfield. Letter, April 6, 1896.

103. Sibley, John Langdon. Biographical Sketches of (Ir.iduites nf Ilarvjird

University. 3 v. Cambridge, 1885.

104. Sigourney, Lydia Huntley. The Bell of St. Regis.

105. Simms, William G. The Iroquois Bourb; u. In Southern Quailerly Review.

July, 1853, 141.

106. Smith, John Y. Eleazer Williams and tlie Lost Prince. In Wisconsin His-

torical Collections, VI. 308.

107. .Stoddard, John. Journal. In Register. V. 26.

108. Storrs, Richard S., Longmoadow. Letter, April 0, 1811.

109. Stone, William L. Life and Times of Sir William Johnscu. 2 v. AH any. ISIm.

110. Sutherland, James. Early Wisconsin Exploration and Sett:en.oiit. In Wis-

consin Historical Collections X, 276.

111. Tanguay, Cyprien. Dictionnaire GOnfalofjiiii e des Famlie: Ca a'.inuis

Depuis la Fondation de la Culone Jusqu'a n s Jours. 7 v. Montreal, 1886-1890.

112. Trowbridge, Charles C. Note on Eleazer Williams. In Wisconsin Histo;lcal

Collections, VII., 413.

113. Van Rensselaer, Cortl.indt. Historical Discourse of the Battle of Lake

George, 1755. Philadelphia, 1856.

114. Vinton, Francis. Louis XVII. aud Eleaztr Willi. ims, Were They Reall.v

the Same Person? Putnam's Magaziue. September, 1868, II. n. s. .".'U.

115. Ward, Andrew H. Genealogical History of the Rice Family. BjstoM. 1858.

116. Waterman, T. A. The Lust Prince. In Cliicago Inter-i.'ccan, Februav.x li, 1^95.

117. Wlmrton, Francis and Stille. Alfied. Medii al Jur spnid nce. 3 v. P.iil

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119. Whitford, William C. Early Education in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin His-

torical Collections, V. 321.

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Wisconsin Historical Cullections, V. 352.

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November, 1858, LII., 441.

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1511. June 14. 1894. 440.

200

ELEAZER WILLIAMS.

125. Williams, Edward H. jr. Robert Williams cf Roxbury, Mass.. .in I lii:<

Descendants. Witb addenda. Newport, R. I., 1891.

126. Williams, Edward II. jr., Bellilebcni, Ponnsylvnni.T. liCtters April ti. 1."..

15, 20, May 2, 8, 11, 15, 1896.

127. Williams, Eleazer. Life of Te-bo-ra-gwa-ne-gen, Alias Thomas Williams.

Witb Introduction and Notes by Franlvlin B. Hnugli. Albany, 1859.

128. Williams, Eleazer. Two Homilies: The Salvation of Sinners Through

Riches of Divine Grace. Delivered August 8, 1841, in tlio Audience of the Oneida Indians at Their Eighth Triennial Anoiver-ary Since the Conversion of 600 Pagans of That Tribe to the Christian Faith. With Appendix. Green Bay, 1842.

129. Williams, John. The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion. Added by S.

W. Williams: Biography of the Author, -Appendix and No es. North- ampton, 1853.

130. Williams, Madelaine H. Manuscript Diary.

131. Williams, Steplieu W. The Genealogy and History of the Family of Wil- liams in America. Greenfield, 1847.

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283.

137. Tucker, The Rev. W. J., D. D., Ham.ver, N. H. Letter, August 2.j, 18;>6.

APPENDIX II.

Children of the Rev. John and Eunice (Mather) Williams.

Name.	Date of Birth	Date of Death r Remarks
Eleazer	July 16, 1688	September 21, 1742	Minister at Mansfield, Conn.
Samuel	January 24, 1690	June 30, 1713	Town clerk of Deerfleld
Esther Stephen Eljakim	April 10, 1691 May 14, 1693 May 1, 1695	March 12, 1751 June 10, 1782 April 15. 1696	Wife of Rev. Joseph Meacham Mini.ster at Longmeadow 66 years
Eunice John	September 17, 1696 January 19, 1G98	1786 February 29, 1704	CaiJtive at Caugbnawaga Killed at the massacre
Warham	September 16, 1699	June 22, 1751	Minister at Waltham
Jemima Jerusha	September 3, 1701 September 3, 1701	September 11, 1701 September 16, 1701
Jerusha	January 15, 1704	February 29, 1704	Killed at the massacre

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APPENDIX IV.

THE BELL OK ST. REGIS.

by

Lydia Hiintlry Slyouniey.

The red men came in their pride and wrath,

Deep vengeance flred their eye, And the blood of the white was in their path.

And the flame fiom his ruof rose high.

Then down from the burning church they tore

The bell of tuneful sound, And on with their captive train they bore That wonderful thing to their natlv" shor.s

The rude Canadiiin bound.

But now and theu, with a fearful tone,

It struck on their startled ear,— And sad it was, mid the monnfciins loue. Or the ruined tempest's muttered moiin,

That terrilile voice to hear.

It seemed lilse the question that stirs the soul

Of Its secret good or ill. And they qualied as its stern and solemn toll

Re-echoed from rock to hill.

And they started up in tlieir brokeo dream.

Mid the lonely forest sliade. And thought that they heard tlie dying scream, And saw the blood of slaughter stream

Afresh through the village gl.sde.

Then they sat in council, those chieftains old.

And a mighty pit was made. Where the lake with its silver waters rolled They buried that bell 'ueath the verdant m mid,

And crossed themselves and prayed.

And there till a stately pow-wow eame

It slept in its tomb forgot; With a mantle of fur, and a brow of flame,

He stood on that burial spot :

ELEAZER WILLIAMS. 'iOH

They wheeled the (lanoe with its mystic round

At the stormy midnight hour, -Vnd a dead iiiiin's hand on liis hreast lio bound, And invoked, ero lie broke thiit awful jrnnind,

The dcniuns of pride and powiT.

Tlioii lie raised the bell, witlj a nameless rite.

Which none but himself might tell, In blanket and buar-skin ho bound it tij-'iit, And it journeyed in silence both day and iii«lit,

So strong was that magic spell.

It spake no more, till St. Regis' tower

In northern skies appeared. And their legends extol that pow-wow's power Which lulled that knell like the poppy fluwer, As conscience now slumbereth a little hour

In the cell of a heart that's seared.

PARKMAN CLUB PUBLICATIONS.

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