La Reunion Cemetery

Some colonists stayed and built Dallas businesses. The plaque names the Loupot, Remond, Reverchon and Santerre families. Wikipedia says Julien Reverchon, a protege of the naturalist Jacob Boll, became a botanist who taught at what became Baylor's medical school in Dallas, and that Emil Remond, a former colonist and geologist, began making brick and cement near the colony in the 1880s, leading to a cement and lime factory in 1900. The Handbook adds that at least half the colonists settled elsewhere in Texas, notably Dallas and San Antonio. The city maintains the cemetery.

What the plaque says

La Reunion Cemetery Burial place of French, Belgian, and Swiss settlers brought here 1855-58 by company for European American colonization in Texas. This site was on road from La Reunion to Willow Fish Traps set by the colonists in the Trinity. Early burials in this cemetery included aged French Grenadier Pere Lagogue; also a young child of colony director F. Cantagrel. The company failed, but certain families remained, including the Loupots, Remonds, Reverchons, and Santerres. They became business land cultural leaders in Dallas area, and used this cemetery as late as 1939 for family burials. Marker Sponsors: John R. Santerre Roy C. Santerre Mrs. George H. Santerre "Germain Santerre Family" Graneta Bilbo Goodwin Le Bonnet Bleu Garden Club (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 3.0 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 3.5 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 4.3 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 5.6 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Bilbo Jitney Line, Headquarters Site — 1.6 mi
• La Reunion — 1.7 mi
• Eagle Ford Community — 2.6 mi
• John Neely Bryan, 1810-1877 and Margaret Beeman Bryan, 1825-1919 — 3.0 mi