Silver City, Nevada- Recurring themes sometimes inhabit family stories. For instance, in the 1970s, my husband’s father, an art professor, moved the family from Reno to rural Silver City with the idea of creating a commune. The first stage of the experiment was to include building two Buckminster Fuller-inspired dome houses on a five acre piece of land, with a kitchen structure connecting the households. Alas, that plan did not work out – two dome houses were built, but were never connected. In a similar attempt, some of my husband’s relatives worked to create a commune in Texas in the 1800s, with somewhat better results.
In 1855, some of my father-in-law’s ancestors, along with hundreds of others from western Europe, came to the U.S. to begin a new life as part of the La Reunion commune near Dallas. Devoted to utopian principles, the community dissolved after a few years, but many of the settlers stayed in the region, contributing to Dallas.
The hopeful group was composed of generally well-educated French, Swiss and Belgian people. Some were political refugees from the unrest then spreading across Europe. Although La Reunion only lasted a few years, “the settlers are credited with bringing a cultural sophistication and world-view to the [nearby] dusty little town of Dallas on the Texas frontier which had precious little of either before their arrival. Without the influence of these failed utopians, Dallas would be a much different city than the one we know today.”
The 500 or so settlers of La Reunion, Texas were pioneers who came to build a community based on the social theories of Francois Charles Marie Fourier. Fourier was a French philosopher and an influential early socialist thinker later associated with "utopian socialism." His ideas inspired a movement of intentional communities, including La Reunion. Fourier characterized poverty as the principal cause of disorder in society, and he believed sufficient wages, and a "decent minimum" wage for those who were unable to work, would eliminate poverty. Some of Fourier's social and moral views, which were seen as quite radical in his lifetime, have become mainstream today. For example, he supported women's rights and believed that women should also be able to work in any job field they were qualified for.
Frenchman Victor Considerant was a devotee of Fourier’s ideas, and he thought the U.S. offered a “splendid opportunity for the exploitation of those principles.” Due to the state of unrest in France, he knew he’d easily find others willing to go to the U.S. with him to implement Fourier’s ideas. He visited the U.S. in 1853 and found a site for the colony. By 1855 people began to arrive from Europe, building houses and clearing land for crops. They built a community store, restaurant, and school right away. They brought with them everything needed to make the place self-supporting, and began raising cattle, sheep, horses, and poultry.
Among the La Reunion settlers there were carpenters, florists, doctors, etc., and about a dozen farmers. The La Reunion settlers were mostly artisans -watchmakers, weavers, brewers, etc. Importantly, “they also were the first bona fide musicians in North Texas,” arriving with small instruments as well as an organ and a piano. Records show that singing and dancing were a big part of their community life, along with other arts and culture events that brought people of nearby Dallas to visit and admire La Reunion.
By the second year of La Reunion’s existance, it was clear that a bad drought was likely to continue, so the artisans began to seek employment outside La Reunion, and by the end of the second year, most of them were working in various trades in Dallas and other nearby towns. La Reunion had mostly faded away by 1860. However, about half of the settlers stayed in the U.S., and many of them had a significant impact on the culture of the Dallas region.
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