The Meeting (phalanstery)

The project

the Meeting was dedicated to becoming a utopian colony inspired by the theories of François Marie Charles Fourier which preached a joint production and distribution for the profit of all. Contrary to other Community ways of life the right to vote was granted to the women and the individelle property was authorized there.

Victor Considering, polytechnician and member of the movement fourierist of Lyon, had been constrained with the exile to have taken part in demonstrations against the Roman forwarding of Napoleon III. During its stay with the the United States, it came to personally inspect the area of the confluence of the three principal arms of the Trinity. Then it regained Europe to recruit the group of the future colonists. During this time an agent prospector, François Cantagrel, was dépéché on the spot and charged with buying 2000 acres (8 km ²) of ground with 7 dollars of the acre which would be used as a basis for the future colony. They were unfortunately grounds limestones not very favourable with agriculture what worsened the fact that the future colonists were not informed in general any in the agricultural domain.

Its realization and its failure

In spring of 1855, approximately 200 French colonists unloaded with the Texas close to current the Houston and moved towards north while transporting their goods in carriages to oxen, traversing nearly 400 kilometers. They arrived on the site of their new colony the April 22nd 1855. The area where they settled was already occupied by approximately 400 people and the French colonists thus increased by 50% manpower of the population, without however managing to establish good relationships with the local farmers because they spoke another language and believed in another political system. Unfortunately their trades of clock and watch makers, dressmakers, brewers or tradesmen had badly prepareds the newcomers to provide for their needs to start their colony. When they after a fashion succeeded in making push corn and vegetables, the food production appeared insufficient and nonavailable to the moment necessary; but their more serious handicap was the climate of the Texas. The year 1856 was fatal with the agricultural attempts of the colony because she saw following one another of the late frosts in May and a torrid summer with a dryness followed by an invasion of grasshoppers which destroyed what remained harvests. Vis-a-vis these adverse conditions, the inhabitants of which the number had amounted to 350 started to leave. Some regained Europe whereas others chose to settle in other areas of the the United States. In 1860 the city close to Dallas in full expansion incorporated the Meeting in its own territory and the last colonists melted themselves in the general population to which they brought their competences.

Memories left by the colony

Thereafter one realized that the ground initalement intended for the cultures of the Meeting was a vast layer of Calcaire, which was gradually used like hones construction in the building at the time of the real growth of the Texas. Certain colonists are buried in a small now unused cemetery with a small memorial near a golf course. The tower of Meeting Tower, one of principal constructions of Dallas, owes its name with the colony although it is located at some distance from the place where existed formerly Réunion.
The botanist and pharmacist Jacob Bowl arrived at the Meeting little before his disappearance supplement and transmitted his teaching to Julien Reverchon which later was made famous as professor of botany in Baylor University of Dallas. The first brewery and the first butchery of Dallas were opened by former colonists of the Meeting and a certain Maxime Guillot founded a manufacure of cartwright trade which remained active during fifty years.

External bond

Collection of articles of newspapers concerning the Meeting, on the site of the Files of the County of Dallas, Texas

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