au texas

Emile Remond

Occupation
geologist
Origin
Thianges, France
Sources
Santerre, Foster, DMN 1906, Boyer, Sandell, DMN 1903

Positions

From the register of positions.

Land

Family tree

Biography

Emile Remond


Name
  Canonical: Emile Remond
  French: Émile Rémond
  Also: Emil Remond (Voirin list)

Birth: August 2, 1840, Thianges, Nièvre, France
Death: May 21, 1906, Dallas, Texas
Burial: unknown (Cordillot does not say)

Origin: Thianges, near Nevers, in the Nièvre department of Burgundy

Family
  Half-brother: Jean Priot (tailor, later brickmaker; also a colonist)
  Wife: Cesarine Santerre (daughter of Francois Santerre)
  Father-in-law: Francois Santerre (agronomist, Fourierist, colonist)

Occupation at colony: unclear; lived there from summer 1856 to the Civil War
Occupation in Dallas: brickmaker, geologist
  - Built a brickworks at Hutchins, south of Dallas, after the war
  - Returned to Dallas proper in 1879
  - Manufactured the first refractory bricks (firebricks) in Dallas
  - His geological discoveries led to the development of cement factories

Ship / arrival: sailed from Le Havre, arrived at Reunion via Houston,
  summer 1856. Came to join his half-brother Jean Priot.

Colony role: none recorded

Post-colony
  - Confederate volunteer, enlisted March 21, 1863
  - Flag-bearer of his unit; wounded, captured, escaped twice
  - Married Cesarine Santerre after the war
  - Brickworks at Hutchins, then Dallas
  - Member of AIT Section 46 (First International), 1872
    Membership booklet countersigned by C. Capy and F.L. Wilemet;
    preserved in family papers
  - Collector of fossils and Indian antiquities
  - Died a US citizen; never returned to France

Land
  60 acres in the WB Laughlin 320-acre survey, acquired from JJ Brick
  on December 23, 1878 (Dallas County Deed Records, Vol. 39, p. 430).

  From this 60 acres, Remond deeded:
  - 2 acres to R. Santerre out of the southwest corner
  - 2 acres to Emile and Gussie Santerre

  Remond Dr, which runs east-west just south of I-30 between Fort Worth
  Ave and Westmoreland, marks the southern edge of this land.

  Francois Santerre's family home was at Colorado Blvd and Westmoreland
  Ave (per Cordillot), placing the Santerre and Remond properties adjacent
  to each other on former colony land west of Dallas.

  After Remond's death (May 1906), his widow Cesarine sold the remaining
  ~56 acres to the Iola Portland Cement Company of Texas for $10,000 on
  September 10, 1906 (Dallas County Deed Records, Vol. 365, p. 430).

  The cement company bought the land for the limestone underneath it --
  the same limestone Remond had identified as geologically significant.

Geology and the cement connection
  Remond studied geology and painting at a Jesuit school and seminary
  before his mother's death caused him to abandon plans for the
  priesthood. He was sixteen when he arrived at the colony.

  At Reunion he would have encountered the Austin Chalk formation -- the
  Cretaceous limestone that defines the bluffs west of Dallas. Sandell
  notes that "Remond's findings influenced Ferdinand Michel to build a
  lime kiln on his land along the Trinity (where Union Station stands
  today). Mr. Michel's kiln provided lime for Dallas construction for
  twenty-five years."

  Cordillot writes that Remond's geological discoveries "devaient
  permettre ultérieurement le développement de cimenteries" -- would
  later enable the development of cement factories. And in 1906, four
  months after his death, the land itself was sold to a cement company.

  The sequence: a seminary student's geological training, applied to
  colony limestone, produced the knowledge that built Michel's lime kiln,
  which supplied Dallas construction for a generation, and ultimately
  attracted an industrial cement operation to the same ground.

Sources
  Cordillot, "Rémond Émile" in Au Texas (2003)
  Sandell, "White Cliffs of Dallas" thesis (1986), p. 45
  Santerre, White Cliffs of Dallas (1955), colonist list
  Voirin family colonist list
  Dallas County Deed Records:
    Vol. 39, p. 430 (Brick to Remond, Dec 23 1878)
    Vol. 365, p. 430 (Remond to Iola Portland Cement, Sep 10 1906)

Notes
  Remond arrived at the colony as a teenager with seminary training in
  geology. He left it as a brickmaker who understood the ground he was
  building on. The colony sat on Austin Chalk limestone. Remond figured
  out what that meant. Michel turned it into a business. The cement
  companies turned it into an industry. The street that bears Remond's
  name marks the edge of the sixty acres where this started.

  He is one of the clearest examples of a colonist whose practical
  contribution to Dallas grew directly from his pre-colony education.
  The Jesuit geology training was not "impractical." It identified the
  most valuable natural resource in the county.

  His Confederate service is notable. He enlisted voluntarily in 1863,
  two years into the war, and was apparently a committed soldier --
  flag-bearer, wounded, captured, escaped twice. This complicates the
  picture of the colonists as uniformly pro-Union (cf. Ben Long, Gouffe,
  the Barbier brothers). The French colonists west of Dallas were not
  politically monolithic.

  The AIT membership booklet, countersigned by Capy and Wilemet and
  still in family papers as of Cordillot's writing (2003), is a
  remarkable surviving document -- physical evidence of First
  International activity in Texas.

Memorial and Biographical History of Dallas County (1892), pp. 502-503
  His own sketch: son of Jean Remond and Marie Pouilliat; "educated for a
  priest until fourteen"; 1856 from Le Havre, 65 days to New Orleans, a
  tug to Houston, where his brother Jean Priot -- "who had come to this
  country two years before," i.e. 1854 -- joined him, and an ox team to
  Dallas. Co. B, 19th Texas Cavalry one year, then Pratt's Battery as
  flag-bearer; taken prisoner with General Marmaduke at Saline; ambushed
  as rear-guard by black troops at Tensas Bayou, Louisiana, and cut his
  way out. Married Cesarine Santerre and settled permanently in West
  Dallas; made brick until 1880 and introduced the first brick machine;
  in 1880 found "alumina lustra," shale, steatite and soapstone, which
  brought a $50,000 scientific brick plant; sixty acres; a Democrat who
  "never ran for office, never had a lawsuit, never gave his note, never
  borrowed money." Priot "resided in Dallas until 1887," sold up and
  returned to France.
  doc/text/books/1800/lewis_memorial_dallas_county_1892/excerpts.md

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