The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 63, July 1959 - April, 1960 Page: 441
684 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Some Plans for British Immigration to Texas
immigration society in the late 1840's, he selected Texas as the
future home for his Icarian communal experiment. Cabetism also
became well known in London. Weekly meetings were held at 13
Newman Street, off Oxford Street, and newspapers like Spirit
of the Age and Le Populaire and the pamphlet Communist of
Icaria were sold.3 The more practical and materialistic British
mind could not accept the idealism embodied in the French
program, however, and the London editor and publisher of the
Spirit of the Age attempted to project a more concrete plan.
The English "reformers" formulated plans for a semi-com-
munal organization in which members would be enabled to pur-
chase shares, immigrate to Texas, and eventually form a co-oper-
ative society. But the new program was scarcely launched when
a cleavage appeared between the association's directors and several
of the persons who had purchased scrip or shares. A meeting was
held toward the end of 1848, and after a bitter wrangle, the
majority of the society broke away and reorganized into the
North Texas Colonization Company with offices at 8 George
Street, Euston Square. John Ellis, a schoolmaster, was chosen as
manager. The original group was generally referred to as the
North Texas Association.4
In the meantime, on October 2o, 1848, John Alexander, for-
merly of Mauchline, Ayrshire, and one of the wealthiest members
of the original association, sailed for New Orleans. Cabet's party
of continental communists were at the same time on the way to
Texas, and a few of the Dutch, German, and English participants
in the utopian experiment were shipmates of Alexander on his
voyage out from London. Alexander, as one of the London "re-
formers," was "particularly anxious" about the Cabet movement,
and although the French party failed to go on to Texas from New
Orleans, Alexander continued his journey and settled in Houston.5
By the spring of 1849, Alexander was advising his old friend,
Bronterre O'Brien, to discourage further immigration to Texas.
O'Brien, editor of The Reformer and one of London's leading
3"The British Section of Icarian Communists," Bulletin of the International
Institute for Social History (1937), 84-88.
4The Reformer (London), June 2, 1849, pp. 46-47.
sIbid., May 26, 1849, pp. 34-35.441
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 63, July 1959 - April, 1960, periodical, 1960; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101186/m1/547/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.