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.[10]
One of the most interesting names is that of François Santerre, farmer and ex-soldier, who remained with his wife and children near the colony site, engaged in sheep raising and farming when the colony disbanded. His varied interests included a love of books, particularly of the sixteenth century edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses which he took with him on six business trips he made to France.[11]
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.[12]
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,
The clay resources of Dallas County very early attracted the attention of the pioneers, particularly the French, who settled the French town of La Réunion west of Dallas in 1854. Prof. E. Remond (1840-1906) of this colony was particularly active in his investigation and experiments with the clays of the county. He made successfully brick, vitri-brick, and sewer pipe. Prof. Remond was the first to import a plastic brick machine. He was also first to use the lime and shale for making concrete and instigated the founding of the Iola Cement Plant. Remond made brick in South, East, and West Dallas, at Dawdy’s Ferry and Mountain Creek.[13]
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.[14]
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
According to a recent letter from Strausburg, which is published in the National Gazette of Switzerland, the Socialist Party in Alsace is about to emigrate en masse to Texas, where one of their chiefs, the well known Victor Considerant, has purchased a large quantity of land. The departure of emigrants is to take place during the ensuing year.[15]
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.[16]