Eleazer Williams

Eleazer Williams (May 1788 – August 28, 1858) was a Canadian-American clergyman and missionary of Mohawk descent.

He published tracts and a spelling book in the Iroquois language, translated the Book of Common Prayer into Iroquois, and wrote a biography of Chief Te-ho-ra-gwa-ne-gen (his father Thomas Williams). In later years he claimed that he was the ‘Lost Dauphin’ of France (Louis XVII).

Life

Williams was born in Sault Saint-Louis, Quebec, to Thomas Williams. He received his education at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. In 1815, he joined the Episcopal Church. In 1817, Bishop John Henry Hobart appointed Williams to be a missionary to the Oneida people of upstate New York.

In 1820 and 1821, Williams led delegations of Native Americans to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where they secured a cession of land from the Menominee and Winnebago tribes in the Fox River Valley at Little Chute and along Duck Creek. Historians have disputed the significance of Williams' leadership to this migration compared to that of the Oneida people themselves, including Oneida leader Daniel Bread. The following year Williams made his home there and married a fourteen-year-old Menominee girl named Marie Madeleine Jourdain, one of his pupils; contemporary accounts noted she was "not a willing party to the contract." In 1826 he was ordained a deacon.

In 1839 and afterwards, Williams began to make the claim that he was the French "Lost Dauphin". During the 1850s he openly became a pretender to the throne of France, but he died in poverty at Hogansburg, New York.

Williams was buried at Saint James' Cemetery in Hogansburg on August 28, 1858. In 1947, his remains and tombstone were moved to Holy Apostles Cemetery in Oneida, Wisconsin. His tombstone at Oneida indicates that he was a Freemason.

Legacy

Williams' plot of of land at his Wisconsin home was designated Lost Dauphin State Park by the state. It was later taken off the list of state parks and his house was burned. It remains designated as Lost Dauphin Park with the land remaining state-owned. The flagstone foundation of the house remains visible.

Publications