DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. Out here on the edge of Dallas, there's a quiet patch of ground that holds a story most folks have never heard — a story that starts across an ocean and ends, well, right here in Texas soil. This is the La Reunion Cemetery, and it's got more than a century's worth of secrets buried in it.
Sometime between 1855 and 1858, French, Belgian, and Swiss settlers were brought to this part of Texas by a company with a grand ambition: European American colonization in Texas. You can almost picture it — families crossing an ocean, carrying whatever dreams could fit in a trunk, landing in a land that was nothing like what they'd left behind. The cemetery sits on what was once the road from La Reunion to Willow Fish Traps — fish traps set by the colonists themselves in the Trinity River.
So right away these settlers were working this land, shaping it, leaving their mark on it. Among the earliest buried here was a man called Pere Lagogue, described as an aged French Grenadier — a soldier, a man who'd seen something of the world before it all came down to a plot of Texas earth. And then, quieter still, a young child of the colony's own director, a man named F.
Cantagrel. That one hits different, as losses of the young always do. Now, the company itself — the grand colonization venture — it failed.
That's the plain truth of it. But here's where the story turns, and turns in a way worth remembering: certain families did not leave. The Loupots stayed.
The Remonds stayed. The Reverchons and the Santerres — they stayed too. And those families didn't just endure, they became business and cultural leaders in the Dallas area.
The dream that the company couldn't hold together, those families carried forward on their own terms. And this cemetery — this ground where Pere Lagogue rests, where that child of Cantagrel was laid — those families kept coming back to it. All the way to 1939, they were still burying their own here.
More than eighty years after the first settlers arrived, this soil was still receiving them. There's something about that continuity that the tall tales never quite capture — not the wild ride in, not the grand failure, but the quiet decision, made over and over again across generations, to stay. To plant roots right where the dream fell short.
That's the La Reunion Cemetery, and that's the story the ground out here holds.
What the marker says
Burial place of French, Belgian, and Swiss settlers brought here 1855-58 by company for European American colonization in Texas. This site was on road from La Reunion to Willow Fish Traps set by the colonists in the Trinity. Early burials in this cemetery included aged French Grenadier Pere Lagogue; also a young child of colony director F. Cantagrel. The company failed, but certain families remained, including the Loupots, Remonds, Reverchons, and Santerres. They became business land cultural leaders in Dallas area, and used this cemetery as late as 1939 for family burials. Marker Sponsors: John R. Santerre Roy C. Santerre Mrs. George H. Santerre "Germain Santerre Family" Graneta Bilbo Goodwin Le Bonnet Bleu Garden Club