Pierre Dusseau
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Pierre Dusseau Pierre Dusseau (1800-1867) was born in Carcassone, in southern France. With a strong interest in the science of gardening, he joined the European American Society of Colonization in 1854 and set out for Texas to be the gardener for Victor Prosper Considérant's La Reunion Colony. With his daughters Louise and Anna, as well as Anna's husband Guillome Portevin, Dusseau arrived in this area in June 1855. He served as gardener for two years before the struggling colony disbanded. In poor health, he moved to Dallas and lived the remainder of his life with Louise and her husband, Samuel Jones. Recorded - 2003
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in Carcassonne, France, in 1800, Pierre Dusseau brought a passion for horticulture to Texas in 1855 as the gardener for La Réunion, Victor Considérant's utopian socialist colony near present-day Dallas. He arrived with his daughters and son-in-law and tended the colony's gardens for two years until the idealistic venture collapsed. In failing health, he spent his final years in Dallas with his daughter's family.
Why it matters
Dusseau's story opens a window on La Réunion, the short-lived European utopian colony whose French, Belgian, and Swiss immigrants left a lasting cultural imprint on early Dallas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Pierre Dusseau
- · Victor Prosper Considérant
Related events
- · La Reunion Colony
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
La Reunion Cemetery
Dallas, TX
In the late 1850s a company recruited French, Belgian, and Swiss colonists to found La Reunion, an experiment in European settlement on the Texas prairie near the young town of Dallas. The venture failed within a few years, but a number of families—Loupots, Remonds, Reverchons, Santerres, and others—chose to stay, becoming business, agricultural, and cultural leaders in the growing city. This cemetery, holding early colonists like an aged French grenadier and a colony director's young child, remained in family use into the 1930s.
La Reunion
Dallas, TX
On this ground in 1854, European idealists founded La Reunion, a colony inspired by utopian social theory that drew French, Belgian, and Swiss settlers to the Texas prairie near the young town of Dallas. Though the ambitious experiment in communal living soon faltered, many colonists stayed on, enriching the region with their skills and culture. The Daughters of the American Revolution placed this marker in 1924 to remember them.
Cox Cemetery
Dallas, TX
Cox Cemetery holds more than 400 marked graves and perhaps 100 unmarked burials, its oldest stone from 1848 marking a two-month-old child. Absalom Humbard, who came to Texas after being wounded and imprisoned during the Civil War, permanently set the ground aside for burials near White Rock Lake, where it served pioneer families—Glovers, Lavenders, Coxes, Donagheys and others who had arrived from across the United States and from Germany. It also served the vanished railroad communities of Fisher (later Calhoun) and Reinhardt before they were absorbed into Dallas.
Pioneer Cemetery
Dallas, TX
Pioneer Cemetery gathers the remnants of four early Dallas graveyards whose burials date to the 1850s and hold many of the city's first settlers and civic leaders. Two grew from the Tannehill Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges, another from the Hebrew Benevolent Association whose graves were later moved, and the fourth from the Old City Cemetery deeded to Dallas in 1871. The last burials came in the late 1920s, leaving the surviving monuments as reminders of the young city's roots.