au texas

Francois Santerre

Occupation
agronomist
Origin
Blois, France
Sources
Santerre, Foster, DMN 1906, Boyer, Sandell

Positions

From the register of positions.

Family tree

Biography

Francois Santerre


Name
  Canonical: Francois Santerre
  Also: "Soutaire" (Sandell); Francis Saunterre (Boyer); Mr. Santerre
    (DMN 1906)

Birth: March 16, 1809, near Blois (Loir-et-Cher), France
Death: December 9, 1889, in his house at Dallas
Burial: the colony cemetery (Fish Trap): "Francois Santerre 1809-1889"

Origin: Maves, on the edge of the Beauce, where in his youth he worked
  "on the farms as a day-labourer, thresher, sower and reaper." Four
  years' military service, then agriculture. A lay republican in a
  village ruled by a reactionary squire; lived in free union with Marie
  Launey until after their first child was born (seven in all).

Family
  Wife: Marie Santerre nee Launey, 1816-1892
  Children: seven; Cesarine married Emile Remond; Emanuel (1850-1939),
    Germaine (1848-1932), Gustave, Rene, Appollinaire (eldest son, buried
    unmarked at the colony); descendants Eloise and George Santerre wrote
    the family's histories
  Son-in-law: Emile Remond

Occupation at colony: in charge of agricultural work -- "one of the rare
  colonists who proved able to cultivate the colony's arid land."
  Santerre's own list: agronomist.
Occupation in Dallas: farmer -- the thirty-year "mini-phalanstery"

Ship / arrival: at 46 decided to go, well enough known to the French
  leadership that J.-B. Godin travelled to talk over the risks with him.
  Sold his property; sailed from Le Havre with several other families;
  Galveston after 60 days; at Houston Raizant, on Considerant's
  instructions, tried to turn them back; reached Reunion in May 1856
  after many difficulties and a cool welcome. He brought a rich library,
  much appreciated.

Colony role: agricultural director in fact if not in title

Post-colony
  - When operations were officially suspended in 1857 he insisted on
    staying. Over the next thirty years built a prosperous holding of
    about 75 hectares on land bought cheaply -- with his large family an
    autarkic mini-phalanstery "that succeeded where Considerant's
    grandiose plans had failed"
  - 1866: the family moved into a large house on the land received at the
    liquidation, at today's Colorado Blvd and Westmoreland Ave
  - Six trips to France in the farming off-season; that of 1869-70 took in
    Victor Noir's funeral, his old Fourierist friends, and Godin's
    Familistere at Guise
  - Member of Section 46; years of correspondence with the New York
    socialists and regular contributions to their subscriptions (the
    Communards' widows and orphans, the New Caledonia deportees, the
    French socialist press); a subscriber to the Bulletin de l'Union
    republicaine in 1875; his letter of December 16, 1874 (Cordillot,
    document 2): "I am for the free and voluntary agricultural and
    industrial commune ... I am for integral association ... I still hope
    for a better future"
  - Placed his savings in France and lost most of the 20,000 gold francs
    in imprudent operations

Land
  1858 receivership: "Santerre" among the eight stockholding colonists who
    took land at $4 an acre (Santerre XI; Sandell II)
  Emile Remond deeded 2 acres to "R. Santerre" from the south-west corner
    of his Laughlin tract, and 2 to Emile and Gussie Santerre; July 31,
    1875, Emile and Cesarine Remond to Emmanuel Santerre, 26.75 acres in
    the Griffin survey for $600 and 10 acres in the C.W. Dooley survey
  1892: partition of the Santerre lands among the heirs, L.G. Coombs
    survey (doc/maps/santerre_1892.png; map room)

Sources
  Cordillot, "Santerre Francois," Au Texas (2003)
  Cordillot, "Les derniers fourieristes," document 2 and n. 17
  Bruno Verlet, "Francois Santerre et les siens" (Cahiers Charles Fourier)
  George H. Santerre, White Cliffs of Dallas (1955); Eloise Santerre's
    SMU thesis (1936) -- the family sources (src/sources/santerre)
  Sandell, colonist directory (entry truncated by the digitization gap)
  deeds.py: Remond-Santerre conveyances
  src/ged/santerre.ged

Notes
  The family that wrote the colony's history is also the one that made
  its founding idea work at farm scale for thirty years. Santerre's
  "mini-phalanstere" at Colorado and Westmoreland, next to Remond's sixty
  acres, is the physical continuity between the colony and the cement
  era, and his 1874 letter is the last dated Fourierist manifesto from
  colony ground.

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