  After the organization of the company in Belgium on September 26, 1854, immediate preparations were made to raise money and prepare the colonists for their emigration to America. FranÇois Cantagrel and a Mr. Roger, Belgian medical student, left Brussels October 3, 1854, for New York, reaching that port October 27. Cantagrel’s plan was to go overland to Cincinnati where he was to purchase supplies and equipment for the new colony. From this place he intended to continue his journey to Texas, reaching his destination not later than the latter part of November. However, his progress was far slower than he expected; he was still on his way in February, 1855, and presumably did not reach La RÉunion until the latter part of that month.
It is not known just how many were in the party, but some joined Cantagrel and Roger at Cincinnati and others were hired along the way to do labor at La RÉunion. Brisbane explained that the work of Cantagrel was to explore the country and decide on a definite location for the project, begin the erection of buildings for the first immigrants, sow crops, prepare gardens, vineyards, and in general construct the colony.
M. Cousin, Belgian, conducted a party of twelve, eight Belgians and four Frenchmen. One of this party was a young man named Guelles, son of the French Consul-General at Jura, who had been exiled to Belgium. Savardan, who disliked Considerant and his group, never tired of telling how Considerant and his wife had persuaded this youngster to accompany the party, even against the wishes of his mother, who yielded only when Madame Considerant promised to look after the boy very carefully. However, once in America, Guelles was turned loose to manage for himself. He left the colony to live with some people near by and soon fell ill with tuberculosis and died. One of the largest groups was assembled by Dr. Savardan. He was one of the outstanding disciples of Fourier in France and had assisted in the formation of other phalanges. Savardan was ready to leave Brussels the week Cantagrel left, but he and Considerant could not agree on terms. Nevertheless, without agreement, he gathered his party at le Havre and sailed on the Nuremberg, a ship of 1800 tons, on February 28, 1855. Savardan had forty-three people and a considerable amount of material which he was bringing to La RÉunion. There were five members of this party from Jura who remained in New Orleans and did not finish the trip, eleven from Carcassonne, three from the Hautes-Alps, three from Ardennes, four from Chateau-Renault, seven from Mons, one from Orleans, one from Rouen, four from Paris, and four from Chapelle-Gaugain. They all had a very pleasant trip which took its course from le Havre to the Azores, where they passed on March 12, through the West Indies, and from thence to New Orleans. Here the Nuremberg stopped and the colonists and materials were loaded on to another ship bound for Galveston. On April 25, Dr. Nicolas, one of the leaders, and ten others left for Galveston because they could not any longer endure the stifling heat at New Orleans. Savardan and the other colonists tarried a few days longer in order to purchase supplies for the party for the remainder of the trip. The purchase consisted of:
The total weight amounted to 7000 pounds and cost, including freight charges to Dallas, $1,000. The party embarked from New Orleans on May 3 with five women and one young man, Christopher, added to the party. Savardan had been advised that Considerant and his family would join his group at New Orleans, but they did not arrive. However, they joined them later at Galveston. Considerant brought with him his wife, a small child, M. Cesar Daly, and two other Frenchmen from the North American Phalanx named Maguet and Willemet. Galveston was reached May 5, and from here they sailed on a small steamboat, the L’Eclipse, up Buffalo Bayou to Houston. Here additional wagons and horses were purchased and teamsters were hired to take the provisions, some of which had been sent from New York, Cincinnati, and New Orleans, to La RÉunion. On May 18, the French wagon train, guided by a farmer who lived near Dallas and who had come to Houston to sell two bales of cotton, moved out through the woods toward Dallas. Some of the colonists were riding horses, two or three riding in carriages, and some were walking. A few of the men who had been drafted as teamsters were laboring with oxen, trying to get them to move along. Poorly built wagons and the absence of roads greatly hindered progress. They camped at night all together for protection against Indians, the women and children sleeping in the wagons and the men and boys on the ground. Eggs, milk, and poultry were purchased All the way from Houston to La RÉunion Savardan reports the colonists were expecting welcoming groups from La RÉunion to come out and meet them. This, of course, never occurred because the people already at camp were finding it difficult to keep things going. They arrived at La RÉunion June 16, 1855. Several other groups and individuals arrived at La RÉunion during the following eighteen months. In fact, many arrived just in time to see the colony disband, leaving them to shift for themselves. Philip Goetsel, a Belgian, had a ranch of seventeen sections on Mountain Creek, twelve miles west of Dallas, on which he established a colony of Belgians. Several cabins were built on low lands which were subject to overflow; other improvements were made, but the colony never did become more than a dependency of La RÉunion. Goetsel, however, planned to build a huge city upon the land, which he proposed to name Louvain in honor of his home city in Belgium. He had invested thirty thousand francs in La RÉunion and when he noticed that it was going to pieces, he demanded his money with the intention of investing it in the “Louvain scheme.” The directors of La RÉunion refused him his share on the grounds that he was building Louvain in opposition to La RÉunion and that it would draw all the trade away from the community stores of the colony. La RÉunion was made up of high class, well educated and cultured people. A brief biography of the founders of the colony has already been given in the first chapter of this book, but a short sketch concerning several will here serve to give the reader a better comprehension of the colonists as a group. Dr. Augustin Savardan had already helped to establish phalansteries in France before coming to Texas. He had also organized and supervised an orphans’ home in Paris which Napoleon III had helped to sustain. He was one of the first men Considerant and his colleagues called into conference in Brussels when they began the organization of the European-American Colonization Society, and they asked him to act as chairman in one of their first meetings. In his report of his practice as a physician at La RÉunion, he stated that he treated 226 patients and served in many other capacities during his stay here. Julien Reverchon came from a distinguished family in France.
Julien and his father came to La RÉunion as members of a colony arriving there in December, 1856. The father was a trained agriculturist and attempted to direct the colonists in scientific farming. He told them that if they would plow and stir the land deep in the fall and plant early in the spring, good crops would be produced. The men, however, were inexperienced in farming and Reverchon had little success. Nevertheless, in spite of the most severe drought that Texas had experienced in a long time, Reverchon grew crops, planted fruit trees, and introduced advanced methods in Dallas County farming.
This book, among others, was in the possession of his son, Gustave, former owner of the La RÉunion Fruit Farm. His eldest son, Germain, was one of two surviving immigrants in 1930, the other being M. Guilbot, who lived near Alvarado. There is partial information concerning several others who were outstanding in the colony. Madame Clarisse Vigoureaux, mother-in-law of Considerant, was author of several books, and also intensely interested in Fourierism. Emile RÉmond was a scientific farmer and writer on soils. A recent writer in explaining what RÉmond did in Dallas County says,
Allyre Bureau, a director of the colony, was a trained musician who had been director in the Odeon, a national theater in Paris. He tried to revive the dying colony in 1856, but failed, and started to return to France toward the close of the Civil War in the United States. He contracted yellow fever near Houston and died in a sanitarium located about fifty miles north of that city. Several architects were in the group, among whom may be mentioned Ureidag, Flemish, who submitted plans for the Dallas County Court House, and John B. Louchx, who was later alderman and one of the fourteen bachelors who came to build houses and prepare the ground for the coming of other colonists. Ben Long came from Zurich, Switzerland, and later introduced a group of Swiss colonists in Dallas. Before his death, killed while serving as a Dallas officer, Long served as United States Commissioner, as Mayor of Dallas, and as an officer in the Sheriff’s office. Texas and Dallas were very fortunate in having a group of men and women possessed of such attainments settle in their midst. Generally speaking, Considerant was correct when he estimated that the French colonists who were planning to come to La RÉunion were far ahead in culture and learning of the average Texas settlers in the state at that time. On February 10, 1855, however, the Texas State Gazette expressed in an editorial a feeling of uneasiness when it announced that
As far as can be determined, there is no roll of the colony in existence, and thus statements of the survivors and descendants of those in the colony must be taken as authority on the number who made up the colony. One writer refers to a roll containing over three hundred names formerly in the possession of the colonists. This roll, however, has been lost and the writer had to depend upon the memory of the colonists and lists given in various articles. Some of the survivors stated that there were as many as 550 people in La RÉunion, but it appears, through a process of checking and rechecking, that the above-mentioned roll was perhaps the complete roll of the members, and therefore there were no more than three hundred in the colony at any one time—perhaps that number included all that ever lived in the colony during its existence. |
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