The History of the Conopus Club of San Antonio
By: Lewis F. Fisher
Published: December 11, 2024
Updated: January 9, 2025
The Conopus Club of San Antonio, founded on May 7, 1921, is the last surviving chapter of Conopus International, which grew from a service organization, composed of business and professional men, based in Buffalo, New York, with six clubs. Its name combined the Latin con (“with”) and opus (“work”) to mean “work together.” Conopus clubs were to provide cities “a guarantee of community uplift and a general elevating of business ethics and ideals.”
Conopus, one of numerous such organizations being formed at the time, in 1919 hired Allen S. Browne as club organizer. Browne, previously with Kiwanis International, which he began organizing in 1914, oversaw formation of Conopus clubs throughout the nation. In 1919 major chapters were in operation in Rochester, New York; Syracuse, New York; Detroit, Michigan; and Des Moines, Iowa. Browne organized Conopus chapters in Dallas and Houston in 1920. The next year Guy C. Dorman, who had previously worked for Rotary International, traveled through Texas and formed Conopus chapters in Victoria, El Paso, and San Antonio. Conopus International soon had 362 member clubs throughout the United States and in Canada. It was especially strong in the Midwest, where the governors of Iowa and Minnesota were Conopians.
The new San Antonio club included more than 100 well-known San Antonians, among them Paul Adams, Robert M. Ayres, Mayor O. B. Black, Victor Braunig, Gilbert M. Denman, Frank G. Huntress, and A. A. Seeligson. Quest C. Couch was the first president. Projects included major fundraising to build the Protestant Orphans Home and opening the Tourist Club to entertain visitors to the city. In May 1922, several months before the start of San Antonio’s first commercial radio station, the city’s first reported radio broadcast was made from Fort Sam Houston to a Conopus Club meeting at the Menger Hotel. In 1923 the San Antonio club became disenchanted with its international organization and stopped paying dues, though it was allowed to remain affiliated.
After Allen Browne’s employment contract ended in 1924, Conopus International began a steep decline. Headquarters moved from Buffalo to Waterloo, Iowa, in the club’s Midwest heartland. In Texas, Victoria Conopians defected as a body to form that city’s first Lions Club. In 1929, down to some 150 chapters, Conopus International merged with Optimist International.
A few Conopus chapters continued independently. Disappearance of the Conopus Club of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the 1980s left the former San Antonio chapter as the last remaining. In the early 1930s the San Antonio club had abandoned service projects altogether. Inspired by a description of the House of Lords in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera Iolanthe (1882)—it “did nothing in particular and did it very well”—San Antonio Conopians adopted as their motto "We do nothing but we do it well.” The Conopus Club of San Antonio has maintained a membership of about 200 and met weekly for social-only luncheons with speakers ever since. The club’s newsletter, The Tadpole, was started in 1922.
Bibliography:
Austin Statesman, March 3, 1920. Buffalo (New York), Courier, September 17, 1919; October 4, 1919. Conopus Club of San Antonio (https://www.conopus.com/), accessed November 12, 2024. J. B. Crowther, Doing Nothing and Doing it Well: One Hundred Years of the Conopus Club of San Antonio (San Antonio: Conopus Club of San Antonio, 2022). El Paso Herald, August 31, 1922. Galveston Daily News, December 30, 1920. San Antonio Express, June 3, 1921. Victoria Daily Advocate, December 11, 1924. Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Sunday Gazette and Republican, May 12, 1929.
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Lewis F. Fisher, “Conopus Club of San Antonio,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/conopus-club-of-san-antonio.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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- December 11, 2024
- January 9, 2025
