The clay resources of Dallas County very early attracted the attention of the pioneers, particularly the French, who settled the French town of La Réunion west of Dallas in 1854. Prof. E. Remond (1840-1906) of this colony was particularly active in his investigation and experiments with the clays of the county. He made successfully brick, vitri-brick, and sewer pipe. Prof. Remond was the first to import a plastic brick machine. He was also first to use the lime and shale for making concrete and instigated the founding of the Iola Cement Plant. Remond made brick in South, East, and West Dallas, at Dawdy’s Ferry and Mountain Creek.[13] Allyre Bureau, a director of the colony, was a trained musician who had been director in the Odeon, a national theater in Paris. He tried to revive the dying colony in 1856, but failed, and started to return to France toward the close of the Civil War in the United States. He contracted yellow fever near Houston and died in a sanitarium located about fifty miles north of that city. Several architects were in the group, among whom may be mentioned Ureidag, Flemish, who submitted plans for the Dallas County Court House, and John B. Louchx, who was later alderman and one of the fourteen bachelors who came to build houses and prepare the ground for the coming of other colonists. Ben Long came from Zurich, Switzerland, and later introduced a group of Swiss colonists in Dallas. Before his death, killed while serving as a Dallas officer, Long served as United States Commissioner, as Mayor of Dallas, and as an officer in the Sheriff’s office.[14] Texas and Dallas were very fortunate in having a group of men and women possessed of such attainments settle in their midst. Generally speaking, Considerant was correct when he estimated that the French colonists who were planning to come to La Réunion were far ahead in culture and learning of the average Texas settlers in the state at that time. On February 10, 1855, however, the _Texas State Gazette_ expressed in an editorial a feeling of uneasiness when it announced that According to a recent letter from Strausburg, which is published in the National Gazette of Switzerland, the Socialist Party in Alsace is about to emigrate en masse to Texas, where one of their chiefs, the well known Victor Considerant, has purchased a large quantity of land. The departure of emigrants is to take place during the ensuing year.[15]