By Vanesa Brashier, editor and publisher of Bluebonnet News
For generations of Liberty County residents, the names Hull and Daisetta have rolled off the tongue almost as if they were a single word.
Ask Russell Kaemmerling where he grew up and he does not say Hull, although that is where his childhood home stood. He says Hull-Daisetta.
“I never saw the towns as being separate towns. It was just one community,” Kaemmerling said.
It was not always that way.
A century ago, Hull and Daisetta were distinct communities separated not only by geography and swampy oilfield land, but also by strong local loyalties. They had their own businesses and their own schools.
It took an oil boom, tremendous population growth, a bitter disagreement over where to build a new school and eventually a compromise to bring the two together under an identity that has endured for 100 years.
Later this month, Hull-Daisetta ISD is marking its centennial, and Kaemmerling, a 1967 graduate and member of the Hull-Daisetta Golden Oldies, has spent years digging through old photographs, newspapers, school records, yearbooks and other documents to preserve the story.
His research has grown into a planned pictorial history of the district and the communities that created it. For Kaemmerling, however, the project is also personal.
His family moved to Hull when he was about 3 years old after his father, Lee Kaemmerling, came to town as a relief manager for a QP grocery store, part of a chain operated by Houston-based Grocers Supply Company. The assignment was supposed to last about two weeks while the regular manager was on vacation.
The manager resigned instead, and Lee Kaemmerling was offered the job.
“He stayed, and that was to my fortune,” Kaemmerling said.
His father and mother, Vill, eventually owned Lee’s Grocery, and Russ grew up in a world centered largely around Hull Elementary School and First Baptist Church of Hull. For much of his childhood, the family lived within about a block of the school.
Even two house fires did not take them far from it. After losing one home to fire in the early 1960s, the family eventually moved to another house on the opposite side of the school grounds. Four years later, that house also burned. Ultimately, his parents settled in another home near the school.
“All my life was centered right there around Hull Elementary School,” he said.
It was the kind of childhood in which youngsters played pickup baseball, basketball and football, participated in church activities and usually found jobs when they were old enough. Kaemmerling worked in his family’s grocery store, in the family’s wholesale nursery business and later for W.G. Shivers Well Service.
Television offered little distraction. Families fortunate enough to own a television set relied on outdoor antennas that had to be turned toward Houston or Beaumont depending on which station they hoped to receive. The options were quite limited to CBS, ABC, NBC and PBS, according to Kaemmerling.
Hull and Daisetta were still large enough then to support numerous businesses. Kaemmerling remembers three grocery stores in Hull alone and another three or four in Daisetta.
People tended to patronize the businesses in their own communities.
“My dad’s grocery store, for example, we didn’t have a lot of people from Daisetta that came and shopped at his store,” he said. “And people from Hull didn’t go to the grocery stores in Daisetta.”
Oil boom brought growth to Hull and Daisetta
Long before Kaemmerling’s childhood, Hull and Daisetta were rural communities shaped largely by farming and cattle.
Hull’s development was also influenced by the railroad connecting Houston and Beaumont. Then came the discovery that would transform both communities.
Oil was discovered in 1918.
Workers and their families poured into the area, creating demand for homes, businesses and schools. Oil derricks filled the landscape, and companies established camps for workers and their families.
Kaemmerling’s research has even uncovered a piece of oilfield history tied to Hull. The familiar horse-head pumping unit eventually seen on oil wells around the world was developed by Lufkin Foundry and Machine Company, and Kaemmerling said the first such unit placed into service was installed in the Hull oilfield.
Despite their proximity, Hull and Daisetta did not physically grow together. Between them is swampy land occupied by the oilfield, creating a natural barrier that helps the two communities maintain separate identities.
In Hull, residents could watch a movie at the Allen Theater. Both communities had grocery stores, pharmacies and other businesses. The earliest schools were considerably less sophisticated.
One early school, Oakdale School, operated on the Barngrover estate south of Daisetta. Other small schools served children around the area, including schools in Hull.
As the oil boom brought more families, existing facilities could no longer accommodate the growing number of children. In Hull, some of the earliest classes were held in the Allen Theater. That arrangement produced one of Kaemmerling’s favorite stories from his research.
Livestock roamed freely through town in those days, including hogs that repeatedly crawled beneath the theater. According to an oral history Kaemmerling found, the building eventually became so infested with fleas that it could no longer be used as a school.
Students — not the hogs, as Kaemmerling jokingly clarified during the interview — were moved to Dr. Bailey’s drugstore for a time. Classes later were held at First Baptist Church in Hull before a three-room school was constructed.
Daisetta faced the same pressures from rapid growth. A hotel was purchased for use as a school, and Humble Oil provided what was called a “bunk shack,” presumably originally intended to house workers, to provide additional space for students.
One district, two communities
In 1921, the Texas Legislature created Hull Independent School District. Despite the name, the district included students and facilities serving both communities. As enrollment continued to grow, the district needed something more substantial.
In 1923, voters approved a $100,000 bond issue for construction of a high school. Then came the difficult question of where the new school would be built. Both communities were passionate about the campus being located in their respective communities.
Kaemmerling’s research shows the dispute moved through several levels of government before it was finally settled.
At the time, Liberty County schools were governed by a county-wide superintendent of schools, who determined the school should be located in Daisetta. That decision was appealed to the county board of education, which upheld it. The matter then went to the state level, where State Superintendent S.M.N. Marrs proposed what might have seemed like the obvious compromise: Put the school halfway between Hull and Daisetta.
There was one significant problem. The middle was largely swamp.
Kaemmerling found an oral history from a local resident Guy Fielder recalling that water in the proposed area could become so deep that horses sometimes had to swim through it. The dispute eventually reached an appellate court, which upheld the state education ruling.
By then, however, the district had nearly $200,000 available for construction and already owned property in both communities. Eventually, as Kaemmerling put it, “cooler heads prevailed.”
The district already owned four acres in Daisetta at what Kaemmerling described as the highest point in either town. It was well drained and construction could begin without spending bond money acquiring and preparing swampy property.
The district also had acquired 8.3 acres in Hull. Instead of spending precious construction money fighting geography, district leaders chose to build in both communities.
Additional acreage was acquired in Daisetta, including property provided by Humble Oil, eventually creating an approximately 10-acre school site. A large three-story school was constructed in Daisetta for the older students, while an elementary school was built in Hull.
Students occupied the new buildings in January 1926. In September of that year, the Texas Legislature formally created Hull-Daisetta Independent School District, cementing the combined identity of the two communities.
From Roughnecks and Gypsies to Bobcats
Even after the schools came together, today’s familiar Bobcat identity had not yet arrived. The boys’ athletic teams were known as the Roughnecks, an appropriate name for a school district born amid an oil boom. The girls competed as the Gypsies. That changed during the 1929-30 school year, when the Bobcat mascot was adopted.
Today, generations of Hull-Daisetta students recognize scarlet and black as their school colors and identify themselves simply as Bobcats.
By the ends of the 1920s, the district was already establishing itself academically. Kaemmerling said that in 1929, when Texas had 852 independent school districts, only about 200 were accredited. Hull-Daisetta was among them.
He found a contemporary report announcing accreditation through the Southern Association of Schools that described Hull-Daisetta as the finest school in Liberty County.
Athletics soon brought the small oilfield district recognition far beyond Liberty County.
During the late 1930s, Hull-Daisetta’s football team put together an extraordinary 43-game undefeated streak under Coach Clyde Gott, a Hull-Daisetta graduate who returned to coach at his alma mater.
Kaemmerling said the achievement later resulted in a trophy recognizing the Bobcats as national champions. He is continuing to research the history surrounding that honor for his book. Football remained deeply woven into the district’s identity decades later.
Kaemmerling played during an era when losing was unusual. During his high school years, he said, the Bobcats compiled a record of 46 wins, six losses and one tie.
“We won district every year, got in the playoffs every year, and we just didn’t know any other,” he said.
His coaches included Elmer Thompson, Joe Evans and Andy Griffin. Griffin, who later was inducted into the Texas High School Coaches Hall of Honor, had a particularly strong influence on Kaemmerling, who remains in contact with him.
The players’ closeness extended beyond football.
“We played football together. In many cases, had summer jobs together. We worked together, went to church together,” Kaemmerling said.
Woodson and the path to integration
The district’s 100-year history also includes the era of segregated education. Kaemmerling’s research has shown him parts of his hometown’s history that he never knew while growing up.
Woodson School was established in 1938 and became the school for black students in the district.
One of the people Kaemmerling interviewed for his project is longtime educator Addie Walker, a black resident who began her own education at Woodson and later attended Prairie View A&M University.
Walker originally wanted to become a nurse, but she was too young to enter nursing school. After returning home, Woodson principal John Freeman told her he needed a science teacher. She accepted the position and ultimately spent her entire professional career in Hull-Daisetta schools, becoming a beloved teacher to many.
Kaemmerling himself witnessed the district’s integration. During the 1965-66 school year, the district implemented what was then called “freedom of choice,” allowing Woodson high school students to attend Hull-Daisetta. By the following school year, Woodson was fully integrated into Hull-Daisetta.
Kaemmerling remembers 26 students in what would have been his graduating class before integration. Twenty-two students from Woodson joined them, creating a senior class of 48 in 1967.
Unlike some districts where integration resulted in bitter confrontations, Kaemmerling remembers the transition at Hull-Daisetta as relatively peaceful. He believes familiarity and friendships helped smooth the way.
Black and white residents already shopped in the same stores, worked summer jobs together and knew one another through everyday life in the community.
“We all knew each other,” he said.
Kaemmerling’s graduating class also marked another transition. The massive three-story school in Daisetta where he had attended classes through his sophomore year was demolished as a new high school was constructed.
His junior year was spent in the old Hull elementary building. In fall 1966, Kaemmerling and his classmates entered the new high school. They became its first graduating class in 1967.
Preserving what remains
Hull-Daisetta today is considerably smaller than the district Kaemmerling remembers. Enrollment, he said, is roughly half what it was when he graduated. The oilfield economy that once sustained the communities declined as production decreased and automation allowed companies to operate with fewer workers living locally.
Still, Hull-Daisetta remains home to families whose connections stretch back generations.
Kaemmerling hopes new industry and employment opportunities eventually bring another period of growth. In the meantime, he is racing against another kind of clock.
He began seriously working to preserve Hull-Daisetta history about five or six years ago. Part of the motivation came from looking through his own family’s collection of photographs and realizing how easily history disappears when the people who know the stories behind those photographs are gone.
“Everybody … always has a box of old pictures that gets passed down and ultimately ends up with somebody that knows they’re old family pictures and they don’t have a clue as to who that is and what the occasions are,” he said.
He wanted his five children to know his history and the history of their grandparents. That personal project grew into preserving the history of Hull-Daisetta ISD.
Kaemmerling gathered several former residents for Zoom conversations with the idea of producing a tabletop history of Hull-Daisetta’s churches, schools, industries, businesses and people. COVID-19 interrupted the project, but his research continued.
When his brother became president of the Golden Oldies organization and the district’s 100th anniversary approached, Kaemmerling returned to the idea of a book. He quickly discovered there was far more material than he anticipated.
“What I ran into was enormous amounts of history,” he said.
He is now working toward completing an 8½-by-11-inch pictorial history, large enough to reproduce the many newspaper articles, photographs and historical documents he has collected. He hopes to have it completed by late spring or summer 2027.
Among the stories he hopes to preserve is that of Frank Malcolm Rowell, a 1941 Hull-Daisetta graduate who enlisted in the U.S. Navy four days after graduation. Six months later, 17-year-old Rowell was aboard the USS Arizona when Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941. He was among those killed.
Kaemmerling remembers Rowell’s parents from First Baptist Church of Hull. Rowell also played right guard for the high school football team that had a remarkable 43-game winning streak.
There are countless other stories Kaemmerling wants future generations to know — teachers, coaches, veterans, athletes, business owners and graduates who left the small oilfield communities and went on to careers in law, education, the military, ministry and other fields.
“We’re not just a little insignificant spot in the road that boomed and went bust,” Kaemmerling said.
More than anything, he wants future generations to understand how seriously the people of Hull and Daisetta took the education of their children.
Those residents were building businesses and working oilfields while their communities changed around them, but they were also willing to approve enormous bond issues and invest in schools.
“Those schools were important to the people,” Kaemmerling said. “People dedicated their lives to building a school system and to educating their children and providing them the tools that they needed to live their life in whatever profession they chose.”
A century after Hull and Daisetta set aside their differences and came together for the sake of their schools, the two communities have become linked in a way those early residents might never have imagined.
Kaemmerling may have grown up in Hull, but when someone asks where he is from, his answer is Hull-Daisetta. It is an identity that has followed him long after graduation and one he still carries proudly.
“Once a Bobcat, you’re always a Bobcat,” he said.
Kaemmerling is asking that anyone with photos or memorabilia for Hull-Daisetta ISD or the communities of Hull and Daisetta to reach out to him through email. His email address is russell3670@gmail.com.
To listen to the full interview with Russell Kaemmerling for the Bluebonnet News Headlines and Heartlines podcast, click the link below: