The Lost Dauphin: A noble-looking man

Continued from last week

“I now proceeded to scrutinize more closely the form, features and general appearance of Mr. Williams, and to reexamine the scars on his face. He is an intelligent, noble-looking old man... he speaks correctly and even eloquently as far as style is concerned… he has the port and presence of a European gentleman of high rank; a nameless something which I never saw but in persons accustomed to command; a countenance bronzed by exposure below the eyebrows; a fair, high, ample, intellectual but receding forehead; a slightly aquiline but rather small nose; a long Austrian lip, the expression of which is of exceeding sweetness when in repose…, “Rev. John H Hanson wrote.

“I asked him if he could account for the conduct of the Prince de Joinville in disclosing so important a secret as that of his royal birth, and requesting him to give up rights previously unknown to him, and which without information derived from the Prince he would have had no means of ascertaining.

“However I may add that at this interview Mr. Williams positively declined stating all that passed between him and the Prince de Joinville.”

“My story is on the winds of heaven, and will work its way without me. They have got it in France. Copies of my daguerreotype have been sent to eminent men there,” Williams said.

The daguerreotype was the first widely-used form of photography used in the 1840s and 1850s and one such image produced a significant photo of a cross.

“The cross represented in the engraving was among the coins and other articles referred to hereafter as having been left with the child. The engraving scarcely does justice to Mr. Williams, or brings out the resemblance to the Bourbons,” Putnam’s magazine noted.

“On arriving in New York, I made inquiries concerning the ecclesiastical standing of Mr. Williams, and found that there was a difficulty of determining to what jurisdiction he belonged, resulting from his having been sent out as a missionary to Green Bay… Distance and the lapse of time made the authorities of New York unwilling to recognize him as one of the clergy of this Diocese,” Hanson noted.

“By those who have hitherto paid attention to this mysterious subject, it has been supposed that the young Prince was smuggled into this country by his friends, and hidden away among the Indians to conceal him from the Jacobins.”

Those familiar with Williams and his family testified to the fact that his looks were not Native American or similar to the rest of his family but more English or French.

“I may add, they all died of consumption,” Hanson wrote.
“I found that the fact of the absence of his name from the baptismal register, at Caughnawaga, is undoubted. Mr. Williams has a certified copy from the record at Green Bay… .”

This was explained by the fact that Williams was privately baptized on account of sickness.

“Which certainly is no reason why his baptism should not have been registered,” Hanson added.

To be continued