Jaques Maximilien Reverchon
- Occupation
- scholar
- Origin
- Marcigny, France
- Sources
- Santerre, Foster, Sandell
Positions
- director of cultivation, Sig colony, French Algeria — 1830s (appointed) [cordillot]
From the register of positions.
Land
- 1859 tax roll: Julian & M. Reverchon — 50 ac
Family tree
Surname appears in the Reverchon family tree.
Biography
Jaques Maximilien Reverchon
Name
Canonical: Jaques Maximilien Reverchon (registry, Santerre's spelling)
French: Jacques Maximilien Reverchon
Also: Maximillian Reverchon (Sandell); "M. Reverchon" (1859 tax roll,
Murphy & Bolanz)
Birth: November 16, 1810, Marcigny (Saone-et-Loire), France (Cordillot).
Hammond has him born at Lyon, 1810 -- conflict; Marcigny is the fuller
account.
Death: 1879, Dallas, after a long illness
Burial: unknown
Origin: Marcigny; his father Jean Reverchon, a cultivated man, sent him
to Paris to study at the college de Cluny.
Family
Wife: Florine Reverchon nee Pele (Cordillot's appendix: "Pete")
Son: Julien Reverchon, the botanist
Daughter-in-law: Marie Henri
Before the colony
- Took an active part in the Revolution of 1830; correspondent of the
Saint-Simonian Le Globe in 1831
- Lyon, where his son was born; then Algeria as director of cultivation
for the Sig colony, until illness sent him home
- Active again in 1848; withdrew from public life after the coup of
December 2, 1851. "Hostile to the regime, he decided to leave with
Considerant." Santerre's list: scholar.
Ship / arrival: reached Texas in December 1856 with his son Julien
(Cordillot). Cordillot's notice on Julien says spring 1856 -- the two
notices disagree by half a year. His name is on a shareholder list of
the Societe de colonisation.
Colony role: stayed several years; then, discouraged, withdrew to land
near the present Davis and Westmoreland (Cordillot: "Westmount") -- the
McCracken farm
Post-colony
- 1860 census: living with two others, presumably his son and
daughter-in-law -- the household at frame 120, lines 35-37, of the
Reunion-area run (src/population/README.md)
- Sandell: remembered in white French smocks and straw sandals
Land
1858 receivership: "J.M. Reverchon" among the eight stockholding
colonists who took land at $4 an acre
1859 tax roll: "Julian & M. Reverchon," 50 acres
Murphy & Bolanz addition book 2, p. E2: "75 1/2 acre tract known as
Maximilien Reverchon's land, out of Anson McCracken survey, deed
recorded Vol. N, p. 95" (doc/maps/murphy_bolanz/west_dallas/add2pE2.pdf)
March 17, 1880: Julien Reverchon, as his executor, to Louisa Girard,
McCracken survey (Vol. 48, p. 471)
Sources
Cordillot, "Reverchon Jacques, Maximilien," Au Texas (2003)
Hammond, La Reunion (1958), ch. V
Sandell, colonist directory
Santerre, White Cliffs of Dallas (1955), colonist list
deeds.py: 1859 tax roll; 1880-03-17
src/ged/reverchon.ged
Notes
A Saint-Simonian of 1831 and a Fourierist colonist of 1856: the
Reverchons carry the whole arc of French utopian socialism to the
McCracken section. The 75 1/2-acre tract on the Murphy & Bolanz sheet
is the one colonist farm whose plat the repo now holds, and the deed at
Vol. N p. 95 is the next thing to fetch.
Memorial and Biographical History of Dallas County (1892), pp. 613-615
The family sketch (written in Julien's lifetime): born November 16,
1810 at Marcigny -- confirming Cordillot against Hammond's Lyon; his
grandfather Jacque Reverchon sat in the Convention of 1792, held office
under the Empire, was banished by the Bourbons and died in Switzerland
in 1829; Cluny; the three days of July 1830; married Florine Pete
[Pele], a lawyer's daughter; a model farm near Lyon, a government gold
medal for plough improvements; 1846 to Algeria to found a colony, which
failed and cost him his health and his fortune; February 1848; withdrew
under Napoleon III and emigrated, "reaching this country in December
1856" -- Cordillot's date, against the spring 1856 of Julien's notice.
Saw quickly that "the partnership system was not a wise plan" and took
a small farm from the old French company. His wife never came and died
in France in 1871; two daughters in Texas, two sons in France. Died on
the same place in August 1879. The family holds papers from the first
Revolution and a letter of Napoleon I to his great-grandfather.
doc/text/books/1800/lewis_memorial_dallas_county_1892/excerpts.md