Elcazar Williams, an American clergyman, who claimed to be Louis XVII. of France, born at Caughnawaga, N. Y., about 1787, died at Hoganstown, N. Y., Aug. 28,1858. He was supposed to be the son of Thomas Williams, an Indian chief, and grandson of Eunice, daughter of "the redeemed captive." (See Williams, John.) He was educated at Longmeadow, Mass., served among the Canadian Indians as a secret agent of the United States in the war of 1812, and was severely wounded at Plattsburgh in 1814. He acted as a lay missionary of the Episcopal church among the Indians for several years, and was ordained in 1826. He translated the Prayer Book into the Mohawk tongue, and published an Indian spelling book, and a work translated into English under the title "Caution against our Common Enemy" (Albany, 1815). About 1842 he began to make known his claim to be the son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, who he asserted had been successfully abstracted from his revolutionary prison in Paris, and brought to America by an agent of the royal family.

The Rev. J. H. Hanson of New York set forth the story in "Putnam's Monthly " in 1853, and afterward in a volume entitled "The Lost Prince " (New York, 1854). Williams's "Life of Te-hora-gwa-ne-gen, alias Thomas Williams, a Chief of the Caughnawaga Tribe of Indians," was privately printed (91 pages, Albany, 1859).