The reach of the clique went far beyond its members. There were “Earliest Texans” clubs in the elementary, junior, and senior highs which served to crowd out many of the more common, and less exclusive, service groups like Scouts and 4H.

The junior and senior branches of the organization elicited howls of protest from both sides of the aisle, with people muttering for years that ancestors arriving in town in 1837 instead of 1835 were needlessly excluded or that there were dozens of groups of “Texans” that had inhabited the area before the club members’ ancestors.

Only a few changes resulted from that. Juan Nogales and his family found themselves unexpectedly inducted one April, and a few people whose ancestors had arrived as scandalously late as 1840 were admitted by a unanimous vote.