au texas

Charles Capy

Occupation
engineer
Origin
Meaux, France
Sources
Santerre, Foster, DMN 1906, Boyer, Sandell, DMN 1903

Positions

From the register of positions.

Land

Biography

Charles Capy


Name
  Canonical: Charles Capy
  Also: Cappy (Sandell); Mr. Capy (DMN 1906)

Birth: 1829, Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), France
Death: June 2, 1920, Dallas, Texas
Burial: unknown

Origin: Meaux; solid schooling in Paris, where he lived until 25. His
  father was a building contractor; Charles learned the trade of
  painter-joiner (peintre-menuisier).

Family
  Wife: Nativa Charpentier, daughter of the colonist Joseph Noel
    Charpentier (shoemaker, killed by renegades at the Trinity ford
    during the war); married 1861; seven children. Mrs. Nativa Capy died
    January 10, 1929 (DMN obituary).

Occupation at colony: carpenter and building contractor (Cordillot).
  Santerre's list says "engineer" -- Cordillot is more precise, and the
  strategy file uses this pair as its worked example of a source conflict.
Occupation in Dallas: builder; Sandell: carpenter/contractor who "built
  many Dallas buildings"

Ship / arrival: left Paris early in 1856 "with Savardan's group" -- the
  1856 convoy, not the doctor's own 1855 Nuremberg party (Savardan was
  already at the colony). Route not stated.

Colony role
  - Opposed the accountant Simonin during his audit, insisting the
    colonists draw a larger advance
  - February 3, 1857: named to the consultative commission supporting
    Bureau
  - Founded and directed a musical company and a choir
  - Left for Dallas after about a year, where the demand for labour was
    great. Sandell: in 1857 organized the first singing society in Dallas.

Post-colony
  - 1861: rented the colony forge (Santerre); married
  - 1872: founding member of Section 46 of the First International at
    Dallas and its elected secretary-correspondent; kept up a regular
    correspondence with the French-speaking internationals of New York.
    By 1875 his name was no longer on the Bulletin de l'Union
    republicaine's subscriber list.
  - November 1872: elected alderman, First Ward (Sandell); 1873 resigned
    with seven of eight councilmen in the charter dispute with Austin;
    Cordillot has him and Willemet elected to the council in 1875, where
    Sandell gives the 1875 Ward 1 seat to Willemet -- unresolved (TIMELINE
    1875.??)
  - 1879: visited France with his wife, to find his native country
    largely destroyed by the war of 1870
  - Still a subscriber to La Renovation in the 1900s; a letter published
    August 31, 1904 -- "Hardly any French from the Reunion of 1855 remain
    here, and all are very old" -- and another of July 14, 1908
  - Countersigned, with Willemet, Emile Remond's 1872 AIT membership
    booklet

Land
  November 11, 1861: S.H. Cockrell to Charles Capy, 1 acre (Vol. L, p. 519).
  1867 town register: Charles Capy, lot 1, block 37; "Charpantier for
  Charles Capy," lots 5 and 6, block 22.

Sources
  Cordillot, "Capy Charles," Au Texas (2003)
  Cordillot, "Les derniers fourieristes" (doc/text/transcriptions/
    dernier_fourieristes_cordillot.md), n. 8 on Section 46
  Sandell, colonist directory; ch. IV-V
  Santerre, White Cliffs of Dallas (1955), colonist list
  deeds.py: 1861-11-11; 1867 town register
  DMN 1906 roster; DMN obituaries (kagay)

Notes
  Capy is the thread from the colony's choir to the First International
  to the city council, and he was still writing to a Fourierist paper in
  1908, fifty years after the dissolution. Every identified member of
  Section 46 was a Reunion colonist, and he was its secretary.

Memorial and Biographical History of Dallas County (1892), pp. 491-492
  His own sketch ("C. A. Capy"): resident "ever since May, 1855, when he
  came here with the French colony" -- against Cordillot's departure from
  Paris early in 1856: conflict. Moved into the city in 1860 and worked
  as a builder from then on. Born near Paris 1829, elder of two children
  of C. and Albertine (De Bratfles) Capy; the father a painter and
  contractor (d. 1879). "Has served as Alderman for the First Ward."
  Married 1861 Nativa Charpentier, whose parents Joseph and Elizabeth
  (Mauger) Charpentier left Paris January 3, 1856 and reached the colony
  in April after a 48-day voyage, via Galveston and Parker's Bluff by ox
  team; Charpentier moved into Dallas the next year as a shoemaker and
  died in 1864 (Sandell: killed by raiders), his wife in 1868. Seven
  children, five living in 1892: Alfred (chief engineer, Dallas Brewing
  Co.), Albertine, Elizabeth, Michael Joseph, Julia Augustine.
  doc/text/books/1800/lewis_memorial_dallas_county_1892/excerpts.md

← the roster · the cast