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Archduke Leopold, the Connecticut Factory Worker Who Might Have Been King

Archduke Leopold of Austria, Prince of Tuscany, spent most of his life in exile trying to chase down money — at least when he wasn’t at a costume ball in Greenwich, Conn., or getting arrested for drunk driving in Boston.

He was a Habsburg, a family that ruled Europe for a thousand years. At one point in his life he was first in line as a Pretender to the Throne of Spain on the Carlist branch. The grand-nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph, he stood in the line of succession to the British throne. Pretty low down – 300^th at birth, then he fell further. But still.

Archduke Leopold, right, with his brother Rainer and mother Blanca.

The archduke didn’t time his birth well, though. He arrived just before the old European order collapsed in the aftermath of World War I.

Leopold for decades tried to trade on his Habsburg name and get his hands on Habsburg money. He also aimed for Hollywood gold. At one point his quest for easy money landed him in a New York City jail, charged with grand larceny.

In the end, Archduke Leopold went to work for a living in a factory in Willimantic, Conn.

Archduke Leopold of Austria

He was born January 20, 1897 in Zagreb, Croatia, the second son of Archduke Leopold Salvator and Infanta Blanca of Spain. He had nine siblings, but his mother had 80 servants to help with all those kids.

Leopold grew up in luxurious surroundings. His parents owned the Palais Toskana in Vienna, Schloss Wilhelminenberg in the Austrian countryside, a villa in Italy and a castle in Lower Austria. His father had a scientific bent, and patented a number of military inventions. Later on, those patents would throw off money when the Habsburg bank account wouldn’t.

Schloss Wilhelminenberg

During World War I, Archduke Leopold fought along with his older brother, Rainier, Both served as lieutenants of artillery in the Austro-Hungarian Army. At 19, Leopold distinguished himself in the Battle of Medeazza. Great-Uncle Franz Joseph I of Austria, awarded him the Order of the Golden Fleece.

Then everything went downhill.

Fall of the Austrian Monarchy

Austria, of course, lost World War I, and the monarchy fell. Leopold and Rainer decided to stay in Vienna and recognize the Republic, relinquishing their titles. But “archduke” made newspaper fodder, and they would always be known as such.

The Austrian government seized their Vienna home, the Palais Toskana, and subdivided it into apartments. Rainer and Leopold were allowed to live there.

The rest of the family fled to Barcelona, where they lived in a tiny house. The boys slept with their father in one bedroom, the girls with their mother in another.

Palais Toskana

In Vienna, Rainer ran a garage. Leopold went to work delivering films to theaters on a three-wheeled motorcycle. In 1925, police arrested him for running over a pedestrian. He then made the news as a police item when the New York Times reported his court appearance on April 2.

He told the court he couldn’t pay the $3 fine because he only earned $10 a month. On appeal, two workmen (probably monarchists) said the pedestrian caused the accident. Archduke Leopold didn’t have to pay the fine, but he did have to suffer the indignity of being described as an errand boy in print.

The Times also noted he had a wife and children to support. Actually, he had one daughter after his marriage in 1919 to the Baroness Dagmar Nicolics-Podrinska, a minor Croatian noble.

Film Career

In January 1927, the New York Times sent one of its correspondents to find Leopold in Vienna. The reporter described the obscurity into which the Habsburgs had fallen. He found Rainer in his Palais Toskana apartment, “a degenerated palace” with corridors filled with old furniture. Leopold had an address in a middle-class flat, but he had sailed for America. His wife and daughter stayed behind in Austria.

Archduke Leopold landed in Hollywood. He told the Times in the summer of 1927 that he wanted to earn enough money as an actor to return to Austria. His motive was revenge: Count Laszlo Szechneyi had insulted him.

While the archduke acted, his secretary, Alfred Neuhardt, mopped his brow for him as he perspired under the lights. Leopold apparently had difficulty playing a German officer because he couldn’t salute. He explained that he never had to salute anyone in Austria, everyone saluted him.

The original caption to this photo read, “Hollywood predicts that Leopold will soon become an idol in Filmdom.”

His film career went nowhere after he played two bit parts, one in a film by John Ford. Director Eric von Stroheim used him as an uncredited actor and technical advisor on The Wedding March. Shortly before leaving Hollywood, Leopold told Photoplay,

Hollywood is a Fata Morgana—a mirage—which lures thousands to walk its streets, although only a very few reach the lucky oasis.

Back on the East Coast

Shortly after the New Year in 1928, the Times found Leopold in Greenwich, Conn., where his friends, Mr. and Mrs. W.H. Stumpfel, held a fancy costume ball in his honor. He continued to make the social pages at luncheons, parties and the racetrack. In 1928, the Times mentioned him along with Charles Lindbergh as attending an international polo match on Long Island.

Hungarian Prince

His fortunes seemed to brighten in 1929, when the Hungarian legation in Washington, D.C., declared him a citizen and a Hungarian royal prince. But the honor didn’t seem to help his finances. The next month his tailor sued him in Vienna for failing to pay him $1,000 for day and evening clothes.

Then a few days later he made the papers again. At a dinner before the Beaux Arts Ball in New York, he got into a fight with Julius Fleischman Holmes, a wealthy sportsman, over Mrs. Holmes.

In August of 1929, he told the New York Times he expected to ride in a steeplechase in Belmont Park.

Grand Larceny

In early 1930, Archduke Leopold lived at a fashionable Sutton Place address in New York City. He shared an office with a real estate agent, Stefan de Pomierski, a Polish count he met at a party. However, as the archduke later told police, he didn’t have an occupation.

In March, he received a subpoena in connection with the theft of the Napoleon Diamond Necklace, which belonged to his great aunt, Archduchess Maria Theresa.

It was all a misunderstanding, Leopold insisted.

Napoleon Diamond Necklace, now in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum

Aunt Maria-Theresa had shipped the jewels to the United States from Vienna. She gave power of attorney to sell them to a man who called himself Col. Charles Townsend. Townsend posed as a British secret service agent, his wife as an Italian princess. They weren’t.

Maria-Theresa wanted no less than $400,000 for the necklace, which had 47 diamonds. It also had historic value, as Napoleon Bonaparte gave it to his wife, Marie-Louisa, on the birth of their son in 1811.

Townsend tried to sell it for what Maria-Theresa wanted, but he couldn’t because the stock market had crashed. Maria-Theresa then withdrew the power of attorney from him. Townsend sold the Napoleon Diamond Necklace anyway, for $60,000, to a West Side jeweler.

Leopold claimed he had only witnessed the transaction, though later it turned out he had pocketed $20,000 for his role in making the sale. The Townsends skipped town, after sending the archduchess a check for $7,270. The rest of the $60,000 sale price went for expenses, they said.

Two Counts

The district attorney charged Leopold with aiding and abetting the theft, and stealing the proceeds of the sale. Leopold pleaded not guilty on both counts.

The Tombs

He wanted a speedy trial, he said, because he had to return to Austria to restore the monarchy. Thinking he might hasten matters by volunteering to go to jail, he didn’t post bail and ended up in Manhattan’s notorious Tombs prison. He lasted 12 days. During his incarceration, though, local newspapers noted a visit by a well-dressed woman named Alicia Coburn, his Sutton Place neighbor.

In November, a jury acquitted him on the first count, and the second count was later vacated.

Archduke Leopold Back In Vienna

By May 1931 he returned to Austria—illegally. He arrived “to seek the help of church dignitaries in obtaining a dispensation from Pope Pius XI, which would enable him to marry Mrs. Alicia Coburn of Canada.” Dispensation or not, he announced he would marry Alicia Condon in Paris. He returned to Vienna in the fall to attend his father’s funeral.

He was still in Vienna in January 1932, when he wore his Order of the Golden Fleece medal with a sports jacket in Charly’s Bar. That annoyed a young Bavarian count, Max Arco, because a Habsburg only wore the medal around the neck with ceremonial clothes. The count called the archduke a swine. Leopold left with his party, but Arco sent a waiter after him with a card challenging him to a duel. Leopold apparently ignored him.

Prince Albert wearing the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece in 1842—the proper way.

By 1933 he and Alicia had moved to Marblehead, Mass. His brothers in exile also found new homes in New England. Archduke Franz Joseph would move to Franconia, N.H., and work as a forester. Archduke Anton and his wife Ileana would move to Newton, Mass.

In the spring of 1933, Boston police arrested him for drunk driving. He said he had only been drinking 3.2 beer, then he missed his court date.

Vienna Again

In June 1937, the Archduke Leopold went back to court, this time in Vienna. The Times reported that he brought the charges this time. He asked the court to order his mother to increase his monthly allowance to $400 from $150. It was simply impossible for an archduke to live on $150, he said.

His mother countered that he was living rent-free in a luxury apartment in Toskana Place. He’d also received a large sum of money recently, she said, and he’d gone right through it.

The judge sided with his mother. He told Leopold that just because he ran through all his money, his mother didn’t have to make him whole. Case dismissed.

Habsburg Fund

When World War II broke out in Europe, Archduke Leopold left the continent and settled in South Coventry, Conn. In June 1941, he sued his fifth cousin, Archduke Otto, then living in a New York City hotel. Leopold tried to make Otto pay him for what he called his share of the income from the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.

Maria-Theresa, the one with the necklace, in 1780 had set up the Hapsburg Fund, which Leopold valued at $120 million. Later he upped his estimate, claiming the fund was worth $200 million. Otto, the claimant to the Austrian throne, scoffed at those figures.

In the lawsuit, Leopold said Otto got cash and jewels from the fund. Otto said most of the money had gone. He also said he had no obligation to “contribute to the support of a fifth cousin, whom I have never seen, merely because my ancestors, out of their generosity, provided for his ancestors.”

Willimantic

From then on, Leopold sank into obscurity. He became a U.S. citizen in 1953, calling himself Leopold H. Lorraine. He moved to a small house in Willimantic, Conn., and went to work in a factory. Leopold and Alicia divorced, but remained friends.

He inherited some money in 1955, but continued to live modestly in Connecticut. The former Archduke Leopold died in 1958 of cancer, his former wife Alicia at his deathbed.

Images: Schloss Wilhelminenberg By HeinzLW – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 at, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21369674. Napoleon Diamond Necklace By Cliff from Arlington, VA (Outside Washington DC), USA – IMG_1704, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5024548. With thanks to the New York Times archives. This story last updated in 2022.

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The Land Rush that Started the Hartford Riot of 1722

In 1721, the Connecticut General Assembly ordered Jeremiah Fitch to begin paying rent to John Clark for land he lived on near Coventry, Conn. Or to leave. Fitch, however, felt he didn’t need to pay rent because he already owned the land. And with that he set the stage for the Hartford riot of 1722.

The Ox-Bow by Thomas Cole

Give Me Land

By the 1720s, Connecticut was running out of open land desirable for farming. Hartford and New Haven had plenty of people, and the state experienced a population explosion.

For many decades, Connecticut didn’t have too many people, but too few. As that changed, land grew more valuable and settlers looked for areas away from the population centers to start farms.

The appeal of Eastern Connecticut near the Rhode Island border began growing. With good farm land, it had few settlers. But who owned it?

The state had claimed ownership, though it had trouble enforcing the claim. The Mohegan Indians claimed to own it. Though Indians had “sold” land to early colonizers, the tribe insisted the sale only represented their allegiance to the new English government. Though that placed the land under English jurisdiction, the actual right to live on the land stayed with the Mohegans. Unless, of course, they chose to sell it.

Map of Pioneer Hartford

This set up conflict between the proponents of state rights and native rights. Caught between these two sides were those people who bought property from the Mohegans, only to be told that they didn’t own it at all. In Canterbury, some lamented that to buy a piece of land settlers had to pay for it over and over again.

James Fitch

None of the ownership issues slowed land speculator James Fitch from aggressively selling and leasing farms in the area, based upon his claims that he had obtained the land by virtue of its sale by the Mohegan Tribe.

Into the early 1700s Fitch was held somewhat in check by the government, run by the powerful Winthrop family. But Fitch still amassed a fortune (and paid a fortune in legal bills) from land speculation.

By 1722, the area of eastern Connecticut was awash with disputed land that had multiple ownership claims. In 1721 the legislature had made its fateful order that Jeremiah Fitch’s claim to his land was invalid. (Jeremiah was a distant cousin of James Fitch.) It ruled he must vacate the property, declaring John Clark owned it by virtue of a government grant. Fitch refused to leave, and Sheriff James Whiting arrested and jailed him in Hartford.

The Hartford Riot

Seeing that Fitch’s future was their own if they didn’t act, his supporters from the towns east of Hartford crossed the Connecticut River and went to the Hartford jail. They declared their intentions, broke down the door and released Fitch (along with other prisoners).

All in all it was a remarkably civil riot. Sheriff John Whiting caught up with the rioters as they boarded a boat to cross the Connecticut and return home. As the ferryman was loading his boat with the rioters, Whiting struck one man, John Smith, with his cane. Smith cautioned the sheriff: “Colonel, don’t strike hard. If you do, I’ll turn on you.” With that, the ferry departed with the rioters.

For the next several months a state of lawlessness pervaded Eastern Connecticut as the sheriff attempted to bring justice and arrest the rioters. The Assembly had given sheriffs greater authority and made it a crime for more than three people to congregate without government approval. Yet the native rights mob ran the countryside.

Branded

The native rights protesters repeatedly ran off the sheriff and grand jury members who attempted to come into the towns east of Hartford. The dispute then culminated in an armed standoff in March of 1723 at the church in Coventry. A party of sheriff’s deputies faced off against Jeremiah Fitch’s son and others.

In May of 1723 the major players in the native rights movement had finally been rounded up for trial over their part in the riot and its aftermath. More than 10 men were eventually convicted. They received punishments that ranged from fines of 10 shillings and a stern lecture to being branded on the forehead with the letter “B.”

With that, the native rights protests largely ended and the government began to assert its ownership rights over the lands of Eastern Connecticut. Jeremiah Fitch, meanwhile, was convicted of no crimes related to the riot. He had not participated in the break-in at the jail as he was already locked inside it.

Thanks to Unrest in the “Land of Steady Habits”: The Hartford Riot of 1722, James M. Poteet and A Complete History of Connecticut by By Benjamin Trumbull. Illustration: View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, Thomas Cole (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Map of Pioneer Hartford Goldie, J. & Goldie, R. (1927) Map of pioneer Hartford: founded , incorporated 1784, showing early landmarks and the locations of historical events. [S.l.: s.n] [Map] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2007630431/.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Lorenzo Dow, The Crazy, Unwashed, Beloved Methodist Preacher

Lorenzo Dow decided he was a Methodist preacher, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. The church tried multiple times to distance itself from him, but he pursued his course and would become easily one of the most recognizable men in America in the early 1800s.

Sketch of Lorenzo Dow preaching

Born in 1777 in Coventry, Conn., Lorenzo was an asthmatic child and a gaunt, bedraggled adult. He had no taste for hygiene, his hair uncombed and unwashed, his beard full and bushy. He carried only the clothes on his back. Any money he received he gave away to needy people or used to buy Bibles, which he also gave away.

In 1799, he received the first of a series of “provisional” appointments to join the Methodist circuit riders who travelled the Connecticut countryside preaching. Yet he repeatedly failed to find support bouncing from Connecticut, to Massachusetts, to Vermont and New Hampshire.

Lorenzo Dow, Preacher

All the while, Lorenzo was honing his delivery. Poorly educated, his sermons were pure spectacle. He would come into a town and announce his intention to preach. A crowd would gather and he would let the fire and brimstone fly. He leaped in and out of windows, stood in trees and acted out his sermons in hypothetical arguments with himself.

Somewhat to the church’s dismay, the public loved Lorenzo and joined up to the church in droves. Lorenzo decided his opportunities lay in travelling widely rather than maintaining a circuit, and his feet carried him from Canada to Florida, from Connecticut to Kansas and to England.

In the cities he could draw crowds of thousands. And in the country, he became beloved by many. In the rapidly-settling west, couples would hold off their weddings until Lorenzo came to town and he presided at the weddings of thousands, though not as an official minister. To show their enthusiasm, the couples he married often named their children Lorenzo or even Lorenzo Dow.

Crazy Dow

His enemies, however, called him “Crazy Dow,” a name which he accepted and would even answer to. Lorenzo was largely impervious to taunting or criticism. In fact, he invited it. Lorenzo loved tearing into customs he didn’t like. He despised slavery, hated alcohol and abhorred Catholics, especially the Jesuits.

For his views, he sometimes would be pelted by food and rocks. His views on slavery were particularly unwelcome in much of the South. When white churches refused him permission to speak, Lorenzo could often find a pulpit in a black church from which to deliver his message.

When no church would host, Lorenzo happily preached in the open air. In South Carolina he was arrested for disturbing the peace, jailed and fined $1.

In Georgia, he inspired a ghost story that lives on to this day. After preaching in a small, booze-soaked town of Jonesboro, Georgia, Lorenzo was attacked by a group of local drunks. He smashed open a whiskey barrel and was on the brink of being lynched when a local Methodist brokered an agreement. Lorenzo could stay at the house of his new-found friend, and leave in the morning. If Lorenzo refused, the mob would burn the house.

Lorenzo left town the following morning, driven along by taunts and things thrown at him. Once across the border, he turned and confronted the mob. They would be damned, he warned them, if they did not renounce their wicked ways. The town eventually sank into ruin with only the house of the man who protected Lorenzo left standing.

Mrs. Lorenzo Dow

Over the years Lorenzo’s fame grew. In 1804, he married and his wife, Peggy, accompanied him enthusiastically on his trips. They would travel to England for a preaching tour together, though occasionally he shipped her off to stay with friends if his busy schedule wouldn’t allow.

Lorenzo sometimes preached more than once a day, in one year racking up 500 to 800 sermons. He was continuously haunted by dreams and visions, and almost nothing he thought or saw went unrecorded. He would eventually publish his autobiography and Peggy would publish hers. Sales rocketed, and by the end of his life Lorenzo had put aside a comfortable savings.

His final base of operations was Georgetown, in Washington D.C. He died and was buried there in 1834.

Historian John Warner Barber, in Connecticut Historical Collections, neatly summed up Lorenzo’s remarkable life: “if ever there was a man who feverishly rowed his boat through the waters of life with only one oar in the water, it was “Crazy Lorenzo” Dow.”

This story updated in 2022.

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William Hull Tries To Save Nathan Hale, Then Himself

As a young man, William Hull redeemed his friend Nathan Hale’s image. As an old man, Hull desperately tried to repair his own.

William Hull

He was born June 24, 1753, in Derby, Conn., to a wealthy landowner Joseph Hull III and Eliza Clark Hull, a descendant of the Mayflower’s mate.

William Hull graduated from Yale College in 1772, where he befriended Nathan Hale.

William Hull and Nathan Hale

After graduation, they parted ways, both to teach school for a year. Hull studied law in Litchfield, Conn., with Tapping Reeve. His legal career was cut short when the American Revolution broke out and he was elected captain of a company from Derby. During the war, Hull revived his friendship with Hale, also a captain. They marched together from New London, Conn., to the Siege of Boston, and then to New York City.

There, Hale volunteered to spy on the British positions for George Washington.

Hull tried to talk him out of it. He asked Hale, Who respects the character of a spy? “Should you undertake the enterprise, your short, bright career, would close with an ignonimous death,” Hull said.

Hale, of course, was discovered with drawings and maps of key British fortifications (by Robert Rogers, no less). The British questioned him and hanged him the next morning.

He went to his death with dignity and composure. Before he was hanged, he said,

I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.

Or he said,

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

A British engineer named John Montresor witnessed Hale’s execution. Later that day he carried a message under a white flag to Washington’s headquarters. Montresor told Hull about Hale’s impressive behavior and quoted his words on the gallows as: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

Making a Hero

William Hull publicized those words and transformed Nathan Hale into a national hero rather than an obscure 21-year-old schoolteacher who failed in a disgraceful mission.

William Hull then rose to lieutenant colonel, having fought in eight key battles during the war, including White Plains, Saratoga and Stony Point.

He married a wealthy woman, Sarah Fuller, and moved to Newton, Mass. Hull raised a family, including a nephew, Isaac Hull, who he adopted as a son. He had a distinguished legal career as judge, lawmaker and member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts.

Michigan Governor

In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson appointed William Hull governor of the new territory of Michigan. Seven years later, with the War of 1812 looming, President James Madison wanted to appoint him brigadier general of the newly created Army of the Northwest to defend the territory from British and Indian attacks. Hull was nearly 60 years old and declined. Another man accepted the post, but he fell ill and Hull reluctantly took his place.

Hull’s army was undisciplined and communication was poor. He made an early blunder because he didn’t know war had been declared. He sent a schooner full of supplies and plans for an attack up the river to Detroit, where the British, who did know war was declared, captured it.

Believing his Army vastly outnumbered, Hull then committed a near-fatal blunder. He surrendered Fort Detroit, fearing an Indian massacre of women and children. He took the blame for the ignominious retreat.

The surrender at Detroit

Hull’s grandson, theologian James Freeman Clarke, described what happened:

He probably foresaw that he must face a terrible ordeal. The whole country appeared to be roused against him, and Hull at once became the best-hated man in America. A court-martial was appointed.

William Hull, Vindicated?

Hull, found guilty of cowardice and neglect of duty, was ordered shot. Madison, however, pardoned him because of his Revolutionary service. He lived the rest of his life in Newton, Mass., trying to restore his good name.

He wrote two memoirs explaining his side of the story, which helped sway public opinion to his side. His supporters held a dinner in his honor in Boston in May 1825, shortly before he died. In June, the Marquis de Lafayette, touring the United States, visited Hull. He told him,

We both have suffered contumely and reproach; but our characters are vindicated; let us forgive our enemies and die in Christian love and peace with all mankind.

Some historians have argued Hull was unfairly made a scapegoat for the humiliating loss of Detroit.

William Hull died Nov. 29, 1825.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Eunice Williams, The Unredeemed Captive

In 1704, Mohawk Indians raided the frontier town of Deerfield, Mass. They captured local pastor John Williams, along with his family. Most of the family (those who didn’t die in the attack or aftermath) would be ransomed – all but a seven-year-old girl the Mohawks refused to free.

A 1913 reenactment of the abduction of Eunice Williams.

Eunice Williams, born Sept. 17, 1696, would spend the rest of her life with the Mohawks. She converted to Catholicism and married a Mohawk Catholic. Her family never gave up trying to bring her home, but when they finally reached her as an adult it was too late. She refused to return, and her Puritan family never got over the loss.

In Deerfield, John Williams was a prominent Puritan minister, married to Eunice Mather, the daughter of Eleazer Mather and first cousin to Cotton Mather.

War on the Frontier

In 1704 Queen Anne’s War raged along the frontier. The French and English fought for control of North America, and the Mohawk and Abenaki people allied with the French against England.

Historian John Demos believes the raid on Deerfield was masterminded by Marquis de Vaudreuil, governor of New France (Canada). He very much wanted the return of the mysterious pirate known as Capt. Pierre Maisonnat dit Baptiste. Baptiste had wrought havoc with English shipping on the Atlantic Coast on behalf of the French until t British captured him. Vaudreuil wanted the pirate returned, and the best way to do that was to capture an important English prisoner and offer him for exchange.

Vaudreuil quietly approached the Indians with his offer and they accepted, writes Demos in his award-winning book, The Unredeemed Captive.

An illustration of the raid on Deerfield, published around 1900

The Deerfield Raid

On the night of Feb. 28, 1704, a band of Abenaki and Mohawk Indians attacked Deerfield. They killed 39 people, including small children. They plundered possessions, set houses on fire and slaughtered cows, pigs and sheep. The Indians took 112 people captive, including the surviving members of the Williams family: John, Eunice, and five of their children, Samuel, 15, Esther, 13, Stephen, 9, Warham, 5, and Eunice, 7. Then they began the two-month journey through the snowy wilderness into New France.

The children and their father would survive the long winter journey. Their mother would not.

Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil. Was he ultimately responsible for the abduction of Eunice Williams?

By April 1704, the Indians took the Deerfield pastor and three of his children — Esther, Samuel and Warham — to Montreal. All four were turned over to the French authorities. They wouldn’t return home until further negotiations ended. Stephen was still at large in the woods with the Abenaki. He would stay with them for 14 months, until he was ransomed and sent to join his father in captivity in a small village near Montreal.

Eunice Williams

The Indians took Eunice Williams to live with Catholic Mohawks in a small mission fort near Montreal called Kahnawake. John Williams visited his daughter once, and she begged him to take her with him. He told her to pray and to remember her scriptures.

By 1706, five of the Williams family were ransomed and sent home. A Mohawk family that had lost a daughter to smallpox adopted Eunice Williams. The family gave her a new name: A’ongonte, meaning ‘she who has been planted like an ash.’ She was also baptized Catholic and given the name Marguerite.

Her father tried to arrange for her release, but the French intermediaries said the Mohawks “would as soon part with their hearts as the child.” She would later take the adult name of Kanenstenhawi.

Her father would spend the rest of his life trying to free the daughter he always knew as Eunice Williams.

In 1707, John Schuyler, a New York merchant who had many contacts with northern Indians and traders, heard about a sighting of Williams’ daughter. He also heard she didn’t want to return to her family. Schuyler stayed in touch with her Mohawk family in an effort to redeem her.

[optinrev-inline-optin1]In March of 1713 the Williams family learned the melancholy news that Eunice Williams had married an Indian. They were devastated.

Not Even A Look

John Schuyler visited her at Kahnawake. She had forgotten her English, and they needed a translator to communicate. Schuyler pleaded with her to return to her family. She said no, not even for a visit.

Rev. John Williams, father of Eunice Williams

The next year, her father visited her. She did not give him so much as a pleasant look. He would never see her again.

Eunice Williams and her husband, François-Xavier Arosen, had two daughters who grew to adulthood, Catherine and Marie, and a son named John.

Eunice Williams Returns

After John Williams died in 1729, Eunice’s brother Stephen took up the task of bringing her back. He had become a minister in Longmeadow, Mass., and he persuaded her to meet in Albany with him, along with their brother Eleazer and brother-in-law Joseph Meacham. On Aug. 27, 1740, they had a ‘joyful, sorrowful’ meeting, and Stephen persuaded Eunice and her husband to visit them in Longmeadow for four days. They actually stayed a little longer, camping out in the orchard near Stephen’s house.

The next summer Eunice and Aronson brought their children first to Longmeadow to visit Stephen, then to Coventry, Conn., to visit her sister Esther. Finally they went to Mansfield, Conn., where they visited her brother Eleazer.

In 1743, Eunice Williams and her family came to spend the winter with her family in Longmeadow and Deerfield, where her brother Elijah lived. Stephen hoped that this long visit would persuade her to stay, but again she refused.

One Last Visit

She wouldn’t return for another 17 years. In 1761, she brought her husband, a daughter and son-in-law and grandchild to Longmeadow for a brief 10-day visit. Ten years later in 1771, she wrote a letter to Stephen, chastising him for not staying in touch and expressing a desire to see him again. Stephen died in 1782 without ever seeing Eunice again. She died Nov. 26, 1785 at the age of 89.

By the time she died, Eunice Williams had one grandson and 12 great-grandchildren. Two of her great-grandchildren were sent to school in Longmeadow, where they dropped their Indian dress and manners. One of them, Eleazer, would later make the fraudulent claim that he was the lost Dauphin – Louis XVII, the rightful heir to the throne of France.

In 1837, 23 descendants of Eunice Williams arrived in Deerfield, Mass., to visit the graves of their ancestor John Williams and his wife Eunice. They camped near the village and attended Sunday services. They stayed for 10 days, weaving baskets and selling fabrics to the villagers who visited them so often they could barely find time to eat their meals.

Eunice Williams’ descendants behaved “decently and inoffensively,” according to the prefatory remarks of a sermon delivered about their visit. And then they returned to Canada.

With thanks to The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America by John Demos.

This story was updated in 2023. You may also want to read about the Rice boys, also taken captive by Indians, here.

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