DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it — the story of Pierre Dusseau. Now, most folks rolling through Dallas don't think much about what was here before Dallas was, well, Dallas. But pull back the clock to 1855, and you'd find a Frenchman stepping off into this Texas heat with dirt under his fingernails and dreams of a garden.
Pierre Dusseau was born in 1800, way down in Carcassonne, in the south of France. And from early on, the man had a serious interest in the science of gardening — not just pokin' seeds in the ground, mind you, but the science of it. That passion would eventually carry him a very long way from home.
In 1854, Dusseau joined something called the European American Society of Colonization, and that society had designs on Texas. Specifically, they were building a colony — Victor Prosper Considérant's La Réunion Colony — right here in this part of the world. And what does an ambitious utopian colony need?
Well, among other things, a gardener. Dusseau was their man. He didn't make the journey alone.
He brought his daughters Louise and Anna, and Anna's husband, Guillome Portevin, made the trip as well. The whole party arrived in this area in June of 1855. A family, an ocean crossed, a new world underfoot.
For two years, Pierre Dusseau served as gardener for La Réunion. Two years of coaxing life from Texas soil for a colony that, as colonies sometimes do, began to come apart at the seams. The struggling colony eventually disbanded, and just like that, the grand experiment was over.
By then, Dusseau was in poor health. He moved to Dallas and lived out the remainder of his life with his daughter Louise and her husband, Samuel Jones. The man who had sailed from southern France to tend another man's garden ended his days quietly, in the care of family, in the city that had grown up around what the colony left behind.
Pierre Dusseau died in 1867. He never made it back to Carcassonne. But he made it here, and that's a story worth stoppin' for.
What the marker says
Pierre Dusseau Pierre Dusseau (1800-1867) was born in Carcassone, in southern France. With a strong interest in the science of gardening, he joined the European American Society of Colonization in 1854 and set out for Texas to be the gardener for Victor Prosper Considérant's La Reunion Colony. With his daughters Louise and Anna, as well as Anna's husband Guillome Portevin, Dusseau arrived in this area in June 1855. He served as gardener for two years before the struggling colony disbanded. In poor health, he moved to Dallas and lived the remainder of his life with Louise and her husband, Samuel Jones. Recorded - 2003