Victor Prosper Considerant

Sources: Foster, DMN 1906, Boyer, Wolski
Notes: colony's executive director; came to Texas 1855. Scope per strategy: directors who came to Texas count (cf. Savardan)

Positions

deputy for Montargis, French National Assembly — 1848 – 1849 (elected) [cordillot]
deputy for Paris, French Legislative Assembly — 1849 – 1849-06-13 (elected) [cordillot] fled to Belgium after the failed insurrection of 13 June
executive agent in Texas, SCEAT — 1854-09-26 – 1856-07-08 (named) [sceat-statutes; cordillot] left the colony 8 July 1856; the agency formally continued from San Antonio
member, AIT, France — 1869 (member) [cordillot]

Land

1856-08-01: F. Cantagrel → V. Considerant (None ac, multiple (Horton, Coombs, McCracken, Griffin, Reed))
1859-11-01: ? → V. Considerant (None ac, TV Griffin)
1854-11-01: ? → V. Considerant (1280 ac, V Perry)
1859-11-01: ? → V. Considerant (None ac, SM Williams)

Biography

Victor Prosper Considerant


Name
  Canonical: Victor Prosper Considerant
  French: Victor Considerant

Birth: October 12, 1808, Salins (Jura), France
Death: December 27, 1893, Paris
Burial: unknown

Origin: Salins. Pupil of his father at the college there, schoolmate of
  his future brother-in-law Paul Vigoureux; introduced to Fourierism at
  the house of Clarisse Vigoureux while preparing for Polytechnique at
  Besancon. Polytechnicien, officer, journalist, politician, Fourier's
  chief disciple; freemason; later a member of the First International.

Family
  Wife: Julie Vigoureux, daughter of Clarisse Vigoureux (married 1838)
  Mother-in-law: Clarisse Vigoureux, who came to Texas with them

Before the colony
  - 1832: founded Le Phalanstere with Jules Lechevalier; La Phalange
    (1836); La Democratie pacifique
  - 1843: conseiller general of the Seine; 1848: deputy for Montargis;
    Luxembourg Commission with Louis Blanc (the right to work, a Ministry
    of Progress)
  - 1849: deputy for Paris; April 14, a bill for a societary commune,
    unsuccessful; June 13, 1849, after the failed insurrection, fled to
    Belgium
  - Yielded to Brisbane's urging and sailed for America: New York
    December 14, 1852; six weeks at the North American Phalanx; Texas;
    back in Europe August 29, 1853. Au Texas (Rapport a mes amis) went
    to press in May 1854.

Company role: named executive agent in Texas at the founding of the
  SCEAT at Brussels (Cordillot: September 14, 1854; statutes: September
  26), the management going to Bureau, Guillon and Godin-Lemaire.

Ship / arrival: left Ostend January 15, 1855 with Julie and Clarisse
  Vigoureux; New York February 4; Washington from February 19 to early
  April, lobbying Congress with Cesar Daly. Reached Reunion May 30, 1855
  (Cordillot). Wolski's diary puts the arrival at June 15-17 (TIMELINE
  1855.06.15) -- a two-week divergence, unresolved.

Colony role
  - August 7, 1855: the Societe de Reunion constituted under his direction
  - Convinced early, with 128 people present in July, that the premature
    influx doomed the experiment and that the colony had to be liquidated
  - October 1855: left for Austin and San Antonio; back only at the end of
    the following spring (Cordillot's other notice: March 24, 1856)
  - July 8, 1856: after Cantagrel's and Savardan's resignations on the
    6th, he and Cousin disappeared without warning on the day the
    convention ceding the colonists half the reserved shares was to be
    signed (TIMELINE 1856.07.08). Du Texas recasts this as a principled,
    illness-driven withdrawal.

Post-colony
  - San Antonio; planned to liquidate Reunion and try again in the Uvalde
    canyons; received Bureau there December 1856 and May 1857
  - Du Texas (Paris: Librairie societaire, 1857), signed at San Antonio
    August 6, 1857; 1858, to Paris to launch a new subscription for land,
    with little response; back in Texas mid-January 1859
  - For years a figure of San Antonio's French micro-society -- his
    carriage with a liveried coachman a familiar sight; a small shop with
    Cousin; then, supporting his family and his decrepit friend, reduced
    "to digging the earth" for a living
  - Friends' subscription brought him home after the amnesty, 1869
    (announced in La Democratie, September 12, 1869)

Land
  August 1, 1856: Cantagrel conveyed the colony lands to him.
  November 1, 1854 (recorded 1857): 1,280 acres, V. Perry survey (K/67);
  November 1, 1859 (recorded 1866-67): Griffin (J/111) and S.M. Williams
  (K/174) tracts -- the West-Texas and Dallas holdings in his own name.

Sources
  Cordillot, "Considerant Victor, Prosper," Au Texas (2003)
  Dictionnaire biographique du fourierisme notice (doc/text/biographies/
    considerant_victor_742.md, FR and EN)
  Considerant, Au Texas (1855) and Du Texas (1857), transcribed in
    doc/text/ (src/sources/considerant-du-texas)
  Savardan, Un naufrage au Texas (1858) -- the page-by-page rebuttal
    (src/sources/considerant_savardan_correspondence.md)
  deeds.py: 1856-08-01; 1854-11-01; 1859-11-01
  TIMELINE.md: 1852.11.28 through 1858; 1893.12.27

Notes
  The founder's own arrival date is contested by two weeks, and his
  departure is the sharpest divergence in the record: flight (Savardan,
  the eyewitness with the minutes) or dignified retreat (Du Texas). The
  land in his own name -- the Perry survey's 1,280 acres bought before the
  colony existed -- is the thread the corporate-structure essay follows.

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