Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 21, Number 2, Fall 2009 Page: 4
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Secret Saboteur
BY JAMES PRATTJn the fall of 1855, the colony of La Reunion
was showing a few hints of success. More
than a hundred La Reunion colonists had been
settled on the land for five months. Eight days of
rain had recently washed away the extreme dry-
ness. Some 12,900 acres of land in western Dallas
County had been optioned or purchased. The
Belgian parent corporation in August had turned
over to the settlers the management of the lands
purchased, called the Company of Reunion.1 It
then became these settlers' responsibility to earn
a profit for the European investors as well as
themselves. One of these properties included a
saw mill, so sawn lumber became much cheaper.
Myriad plant cuttings, seeds, and pips shipped
overseas had been safely stowed and were now
growing outside Houston on land bought along
Buffalo Bayou. By mid-fall several buildings had
been erected on the site.The company store was
beginning to do business outside the colony, as it
offered products such as brandied peaches not
otherwise available in frontier villages; the keep-
er of the labor books, Auguste Savardan, report-
ed with satisfaction its $200-$300 a month in
sales.The colonists had harvested wild grapes and
put up a first vintage of wine. Opening a bottle
for a ceremony after it had been corked a short
time, Maximilien Reverchon wrote the next
spring to Europe that the wine had prospects. A
first marriage between a colonist and a settler
took place in early November.2 There was no
loan agency in the region, and a colonist hadstarted acting as a banker, making a personal loan
to a local settler, one to other than the European
colonists. The Fourierist utopians had befriend-
ed the American doctor fromVirginia who min-
istered to the little village of Dallas, and who, like
the doctors at Reunion who gardened for recre-
ation, found pleasure in building the first garden
at Dallas.
In October and November, the Paris direc-
tors were sending four more ships from le Havre
across the ocean to New Orleans, bringing more
colonists to arrive in January and then still more
in the spring.They also planned for several later
ships to satisfy the clamor of prospective
colonists. The Reunion immigrants on the site
were regaining their optimism as Executive
Director Victor Considerant left Reunion for
Austin in late October to seek, like the Peters
group before him, an empresario grant of free
land from the Fourth Texas State Legislature.3
But corporation managers in Paris were
concerned. Communications about matters at
Reunion were too slow to reach them. Although
they had letters from Director Francois
Cantagrel and Auguste Savardan, as well as other
colonists, they had not a single report from
Victor Considerant, the Executive Director,
since he had left New York the prior April. In
frustration, to get an accounting of on-the-
ground expenses against the stockholders'
$400,000 investment, they had sent from New
York a professional accountant to balance the4 LEGACIES Fall 2009
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Dallas Heritage Village. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 21, Number 2, Fall 2009, periodical, 2009; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth66965/m1/6/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Historical Society.