Michigan Historical Reprint Series

The Lost Prince: Facts Tending to Prove the Identity of Louis the Seventeenth, of France, and the Rev. Eleazar Williams, Missionary Among the Indians of North America. by John H. Hanson. Michigan Historical Reprint Series

Although the story of the Lost Dauphin begins with the French Revolution in 1789, it really is a nineteenth century romance. More than forty people were claiming to the throne of France, most of them obviously fraudulent, and the mystery of the little prince's disappearance was heightened by the possibility that he would reappear in some dramatic way to reclaim his title. An abundance of magazine articles and books speculated and debated, but no unchallenged Dauphin appeared.

The Lost Prince: Facts tending to Prove the Identity of Louis the Seventeenth, of France, and the Rev. Eleazar Williams, Missionary Among the Indians of North America is part of the romance and the debate of the time. The excitement eventually perished, and only in isolated spots does it occasionally re-emerge. Northern New York is one of those places, where the name of Eleazer Williams is still known, and his origin still discussed.

Did the little boy, the Dauphin who would have become Louis XVII, rightful king of France, survive the horrors of captivity in 1795? And if so, was he spirited away from Paris to be raised by a Mohawk family in Caughnawage? And if that, did he grow up to become Eleazer Williams, teacher, Episcopalian missionary, priest and Indian administrator?