Eugene A. Daule

Born into slavery in 1860, Eugene Daule studied at schools founded for people like him after emancipation. Leland University in New Orleans was founded in 1870 and admitted students "irrespective of race, color or previous condition of servitude." Guadalupe College in Seguin was started by a Baptist association in 1884, and by 1926 the state accepted its teacher-education credits. Daule took his bachelor's degree there in 1930, at about seventy, six years before fire destroyed its main building on February 9, 1936.

What the plaque says

Eugene A. Daule Eugene A. Daule (1860-1943) was born into slavery into St. James Parish, Louisiana. He attended Leland University in New Orleans and Prairie View State College, now known as Prairie View A&M University. Though the exact date of his arrival in Cuero is unknown, he was hired as a teacher for the Cuero Colored High School located on Lincoln Street in the late 1890s. As early as 1897, Daule was in charge of the Summer Normal School for Colored Teachers. He was appointed principal in 1901. The school later moved to Toussaint L'Ouverture Street (later T L Overture) in 1904. He married Jackson, Mississippi, native Kate A.L. Mosely (1869-1939) around 1888. The couple had no children. Daule favored a blend of vocational courses and a classical curriculum to ensure students could maintain an independent lifestyle and assume duties as responsible citizens. While Daule was principal, the school offered Latin, oratory classes, and sports. Daule advised his students to excel in their education and he led by example. Active in the Colored Teachers Institute of DeWitt County, Daule served on the program committee in 1899. He also held a tri-county institute for African American teachers in 1925 and hosted a three-day program for the South Texas Colored Teachers' Association in 1926. He continued his own education throughout his lifetime and was awarded a Bachelor of Science from Guadalupe College in Seguin in 1930. Highly respected by all, Daule came to be known as "Professor Daule." He continued as teacher and principal until he retired in 1931. Seven years later, the school board and PTA changed the name of from Cuero Colored High School to Daule High School to honor the man who inspired the African American students of Cuero. In September 1949, Daule School received a new campus, which served the African American population until integration in 1965. (2023)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 0.5 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 25 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• De León Plaza — 27 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 27 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.

More markers nearby

• Buchel Bank — 0.4 mi
• Early Texas Bandstands — 0.5 mi
• Cuero Land and Immigration Company — 0.6 mi
• World War II Air Training School Brayton Flying Field — 0.6 mi