Cesar Daly

Sources

Santerre, Wolski

Notes

Wolski ('Mr. Dailly'): directed the buildings, then left for Panama in October 1855

Biography

Cesar Daly


Name
  Canonical: Cesar Daly
  Full: Cesar Denis Daly
  Also: "Ceaser Daly" (Santerre). Not Abel Doelly/Dailly, the tinsmith --
    a different man, though Wolski conflates them.

Birth: 1811, Verdun, of an Irish father and a French mother
Death: January 18, 1894, Wissous (Essonne)
Burial: unknown

Origin: educated in Britain, back in France at 16; travelled in the East;
  settled at Wissous near Paris, where Considerant was his guest for nearly
  three years. Architect -- Cordillot says "well-known sculptor" -- friend
  of Viollet-le-Duc and restorer of Albi cathedral; founded in 1840 the
  Revue generale de l'architecture et des travaux publics, which he
  edited and in which he published complete plans for a phalanstery.

Before the colony
  - Fourierist from the early 1830s; contributor to La Democratie
    pacifique (1843-51); subscriber to Flora Tristan's Union ouvriere
  - 1848: Blanqui's Societe republicaine centrale; drew for Louis Blanc
    and the Luxembourg Commission plans for housing 400 working families
    with common consumption; April candidate for the Constituante, struck
    from the Luxembourg list as an architect, not a worker; September,
    named by Proudhon to the commission for the Banque du Peuple

Ship / arrival: joined Considerant at Washington in April 1855 to help
  negotiate with the federal government; came on to Reunion with
  Considerant's party (May-June 1855).

Colony role: a short stay; drew the plans for the entrance of the storage
  cellar Savardan proposed to build.

Post-colony
  - October 1855: left for France; fell ill at Fort Washita in the Indian
    Territory and had to turn back
  - 1856: accompanied Considerant to Austin as interpreter; won over
    senators and journalists -- had he stayed for the next session,
    Cordillot suggests, he might have got the colonists a free land grant
    (the legislature reported against the grant July 19, 1856)
  - Left again, visiting Central America before returning to France

Sources
  Cordillot, "Daly Cesar, Denis," Au Texas (2003)
  Dictionnaire biographique du fourierisme notice (doc/text/biographies/
    daly_cesar_845.md, FR and EN)
  Santerre, White Cliffs of Dallas (1955), colonist list ("a few others")
  Savardan, Un naufrage au Texas (1858)
  TIMELINE.md: 1855.12.??, 1856.07.19

Notes
  The most distinguished architect in France spent a season at the colony
  and left a cellar entrance. His real service was at Austin, and the
  land-grant campaign he might have carried is the colony's structural
  what-if.

← the roster · the cast