The Lost Dauphin: An interview with a prince

Continued from last week

In an 1853 Putnam magazine article, Rev. John H. Hanson continued to recount Eleazar Williams’ tale, as the Prince of Joinville connects with him through the church asking for an interview with Williams before he returns to France.

“Some time elapsed, and I heard nothing more on the subject, which was beginning to fade from my mind; when one day, while on board a steamer on Lake Michigan, I had an interview with the Prince, who shortly after, at Green Bay, revealed the secret of my birth,” Williams said.

“My reputed mother is still living at a very advanced age. She is now at Caughnawaga (New York.)

“I ought, as soon as the Prince told me the secret of my birth, to have returned to the East and seen her. But I unfortunately neglected to do so for some time, and when I did come, I found that the Romish Priests had been tampering with her, and that her mouth was hermetically sealed.”

Williams claims that the priests told her, “Suppose that this man should prove to be heir to a throne on the other side of the Great Salt Lake, what injury may he not do to the church. He has been brought up a Protestant, and if he obtained sovereign power it would be the ruin of many souls. You must therefore say nothing one way.”

“But we have had the Baptismal register at Caughnawaga examined, and the priest was made to certify to it, and though the names of all the rest of her children are recorded there, together with the dates of their birth and baptism,” Williams said, “mine does not occur there and the births of the children follow so closely upon each other at regular intervals — of two years between each — that it does not seem naturally possible I could have been her child, unless I was a twin to some other child whose birth and baptism are recorded while mine are not…”

Williams also added the story of a French gentleman who died in New Orleans in 1848 with the last name of Belanger “who confessed on his death -bed that he was the person who brought the Dauphin to this country, and placed him among the Indians, in the northern part of the State of New-York,” Williams said.

“It seems that Belanger had taken a solemn oath of secrecy, alike for the preservation of the Dauphin, and the safety of those who were instrumental in effecting his escape, but the near approach of death and the altered circumstances of the times, induced him to break silence before his departure from the world.”

On the steamship, Williams also produced a silk dress with about a dozen feet of train.

“It is a dress of Marie Antoinette. It was given to me by a person who bought it in France, and who hearing my story, and considering me the rightful owner, made me a present of it.”

To be continued