William B. Conway

William Bernard Conway (1802–1839) was an American politician and newspaperman who was the first secretary and first acting governor of Iowa Territory.

Conway was born in New Castle County, Delaware. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1830, he started publishing The American Manufacturer, a newspaper supportive of the Democratic Party.[1] In 1833, he was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar[2] and opened a law practice,[3] which he relocated from Pittsburgh to Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1835.[4] While in Johnstown he founded a newspaper called the Mountaineer in early 1836; later in the same year he moved its publication to Ebensburg, Pennsylvania.[4] In 1838, he was appointed Secretary of the Iowa Territory and served briefly as acting governor until the arrival of the Iowa Territorial Governor Robert Lucas.[5] Conway had never before held a political office; his appointment as secretary was said to have been in reward for his journalistic support of presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren.[6] Conway died in Davenport, Iowa Territory while in office in 1839.[7] He was the writer of a poem, "Bribed Legislator", and a novel, The Cottage on the Cliff: A Tale of the Revolution.[8]

References
  1. Glasco, Laurence A. (2004). The WPA History of the Negro in Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 157. ISBN 0-8229-4232-1.
  2. The Twentieth Century Bench and Bar of Pennsylvania. 2. Chicago: H.C. Cooper, Jr., Bro. & Co. 1903. p. 834.
  3. "William B. Conway, Attorney at Law". The Daily Pittsburgh Gazette. 5 December 1833. p. 3.
  4. Storey, Henry Wilson (1907). History of Cambria County, Pennsylvania. 1. New York: Lewis Publishing Company. p. 377.
  5. "The Quarrel Between Governor Lucas and Secretary Conway". The Annals of Iowa. 2 (2): 221–224. 1895. doi:10.17077/0003-4827.2037. Retrieved June 20, 2019 – via State Historical Society of Iowa.
  6. Van Ek, Jacob (April 1924). "The Pen Knife Quarrel". The Palimpsest. 5 (4): 139.
  7. Storey, Henry Wilson (1907). History of Cambria County, Pennsylvania. 1. New York: Lewis Publishing Company. p. 379.
  8. Storey, Henry Wilson (1907). History of Cambria County, Pennsylvania. 2. New York: Lewis Publishing Company. pp. 434–435.
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