The Lost Dauphin: A chance meeting

Continued from last week

In February 1853, Putnam’s magazine ran the first installment of the story “Have We a Bourbon in Our Midst?”

The House of Bourbon — a noble family that ruled France from 1589–1792 and 1814–1848 — descended from Louis I, including the Lost Dauphin.

An introduction by a Rev. Dr. Hawks provides credibility to the story and to the man claiming to be a part of French royalty — Eleazar Williams.

“I observed about two years ago, a paragraph in the papers, stating that facts had recently come to light which rendered it probably that the Rev. Mr. Williams, of Green Bay, Wisconsin, was none other than Louis XVII, but as the circumstances on which the statement was based were not mentioned, except that he bore a strong resemblance to the Bourbon family, my curiosity was excited, and I made fruitless inquiries in many quarters, finding no one who could give me the slightest clue to the mystery,” wrote Rev. John H. Hanson, who relayed the story’s 1853 narrative.

Then fate stepped in as Williams returned to New York and Hanson had a chance encounter with him on a train there.

Introducing himself as a fellow clergyman, “I told him that I had seen a statement in the newspapers, which had excited my curiousity, and should feel obliged, if it was not intrusive, by being informed if he believed the story of this royal origin, and upon what evidence the extraordinary claim was based,” Hanson said.

“He replied that the subject was painful to him, nor could he speak unmoved, but that he would with pleasure give me the required information.”

He then asked Williams if he had any memory of Paris or the voyage to the new country.

“Therein, lies the mystery of my life. Everything that occurred to me is blotted out, entirely erased, irrecoverably gone. My mind is blank until 13 or 14 years of age,” Williams told Hanson.

Williams said the loss came from diving off a “high rock” into Lake George with a group of Native American boys with which he resided.

“I was always under the impression,” he said, “that I was at least partly of Indian extraction, until the time that the Prince de Joinville came to the country. “

The Prince of Joinville was the third son of Louis Phillipe, who was then the French king, whose trip the article claims was to obtain a renunciation to France’s throne.

“One of the first questions that he asked on his arrival in New York was whether there was such a person known as Eleazer Williams among the Indians in the northern part of the state; and after some inquiries in different quarters, he was told that there was such a person who was at that time a missionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Green Bay…” Williams said.

To be continued