Strangers – Today

Ulric Zellweger, — January 19, 1871

Ulric Zellweger was a Swiss merchant and philanthropist. He operated a mercantile business in Cuba, before returning to Switzerland where he engaged in religious and philanthropic pursuits.

Source — Source — Source

John Gustavus Adolphus Williamson, 1793-1840

John Gustavus Adolphus Williamson was an American politician and diplomat. He served in North Carolina's state government before being named the U.S. Consul in La Guaira, Venezuela in 1827. He was later promoted to U.S. Charge d'Affaires to Venezuela, a position he held from 1835 until his death in 1840. Williamson kept diaries during his time in Venezuela which were later published, a copy of which is held in the Athenaeum's collections.

Source — Source — Source

Eleazer Williams, May 1788 — August 28, 1858

Eleazer Williams was a French-Canadian-American Episcopalian clergyman, missionary, and educator of Mohawk descent. He served in the War of 1812, and afterwards was made a missionary to the Oneida people in New York, finding success thanks to his fluency in the Mohawk language. In the early 1820s, Williams enacted a plan to resettle members of various indigenous groups in Wisconsin. He was joined in this mission by Albert G. Ellis, whose name appears below Williams' in the Record of Strangers, indicating the two visited the Athenaeum together on this occasion. Williams settled in Green Bay, married his student, a French-Menominee woman, and was ordained a priest. However, he eventually lost the confidence of both the church and the indigenous people, and his ties with the Oneidas were severed. During the 1850s, Williams developed and promoted the fantasy that he was the “lost dauphin,” son of Louis XVI and heir to the throne of France. Williams was the author of multiple pamphlets and translations of religious works into Mohawk and Iroquois languages, as well as a spelling book in the Iroquois language.

Portrait courtesy of Smithsonian Open Access — Source — Source — Source — Source

Albert Gallatin Ellis, August 24, 1800 — December 23, 1885

Albert Gallatin Ellis was an American missionary, politician, and newspaper editor. He acted as a printer's apprentice before he was recruited to instruct a group of the Oneida peoples in New York. In 1822 he was made a missionary by the Protestant Episcopal Church, and later accompanied Eleazer Williams (with whom he visited the Athenaeum on this occasion) to Green Bay, who sought to establish a colony there comprised of members of multiple indigenous groups. Ellis would go on to settle in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, where he published a newspaper and served four separate terms as mayor between 1860 and 1872.

Portrait courtesy of Wikimedia Commons — Source — Source — Source