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The Lost Dauphin: A legend endures

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Continued from last week

According to the biography connected with the Eleazer Williams papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society, shortly after his move to Green Bay Williams became “negligent in his duties as teacher and missionary” losing the confidence of the people he was serving.

“He established a school in the area, but its pupils were the children of new white settlers and the few remaining French traders,” the biography said.

“In 1823, he married one of his students, Madeline Jourdaine, a Menominee of mixed Indian and French ancestry, who took the name Mary Hobart.”

The couple built a cabin on the bank of the Fox River, but when the De Pere dam was constructed they forced uphill.

Today, Lost Dauphin Park, located south of Green Bay, is situted on 19 acres of the Williams’ homestead on land owned by the state since 1947.

The land was gifted to the state that year by property owner, L.W. Gillespie, on the condition that it be maintained as a state park.

The home on the property was later destroyed by fire.

“By 1832, a council of the Oneida Indians formally repudiated Williams and, upon their request, the church withdrew from him all confidence and support. Williams continued to pursue his plan for an Indian empire in Wisconsin until 1836 when the conclusion of the Schermerhorn Treaty stipulated that the land in the area would be opened to white settlement. Most of the Menominee lands were ceded to the government and the New York Indians were restricted to two small tracts of land,” the biography added.

“In 1842, Bishop Jackson Kemper censured Williams and requested him to leave the Oneida Indians to their own devices. Following the final demise of his scheme, Williams moved to a small cabin at Kaukauna and spent most of his time traveling on the Great Lakes and along the Eastern Seaboard.”

In 1858, Williams is said to have died poor in New York and was buried there.
In 1947, his remains and tombstone were later moved to the Holy Apostles Church Cemetery at Oneida.

More than two decades ago, French historians announced that DNA testing from a “preserved heart,” of the boy who died in the Paris prison two centuries earlier, proved that the boy was in fact the son of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

The announcement scientifically discredited the claims of Eleazer Williams, but the legend will endure giving Williams the notarity he appeared to pursue.

Lost Dauphin, Williams, Wisconsin Historical Society, legend, biography

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