lxxxvi AUDUBON THE NATURALIST 



In 1851 the Naundorff family tried to get from the French 

 Government an acknowledgment of their right to the use of the 

 Bourbon name, but without success ; they appealed against this 

 verdict in 1874, but lost again. Finally, in 1911, the Naundorff 

 descendants made a third attempt at having their claim of 

 being scions and heirs of Louis XVI acknowledged in France, 

 but were again denied, and there the matter now stands. 

 Naundorff had neither the physiognomy nor the physical 

 marks of the Dauphin, but many believed that he was rather 

 better than the average run of pretenders. Minnegerode, 

 whom I have followed in this statement of the Naundorff case, 12 

 is undoubtedly right in saying that the admission wrung from 

 France by the Dutch in 1845 was one which no French court 

 would for a moment have allowed. Nevertheless, Naundorff 

 was buried with the honors of royalty at Delft, and his monu- 

 ment there bears this inscription : "Louis XVII, roi de France 

 et de Navarre (Charles Louis due de Normandie)." Only 

 recently (July, 1937) the death was announced of one of 

 Naundorff's descendants, most of whom had clung to the fiction 

 of their Bourbon inheritance. 



A much more difficult subject to understand than the 

 Hervagaults, the Richemonts, or the Naundorffs is the psy- 

 chology of an American pretender to royalty, Eleazar Williams, 

 one-time missionary to the Indians. It is a pity that Gamaliel 

 Bradford never psychographed him. He had no criminal 

 record, but was a teacher among the Indians for many years, 

 and Bishop Hobart, of New York, ordained him to the ministry 

 of the Protestant Episcopal Church and baptised his Indian 

 wife, giving her the name of Mary Hobart. Williams trans- 

 lated the Book of Common Prayer and numerous hymns into 

 the Iroquois language, and at Green Bay, Wisconsin, started a 

 school for half-breed Indian children. This was maintained 

 until 1823, when he married one of his pupils. In 1839 Wil- 

 liams is said to have confided to a Buffalo editor that he was 



12 See Meade Minnigerode, The Son of Marie Antoinette: the Mystery 

 of the Temple Tower (New York, 1934). 



