He eventually attended the Oshkosh Normal School, and graduated from the Northwestern Business College in Madison.
He taught school for three years; graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School in June 1895; and took up law practice in Grand Rapids in July of that year, specializing in personal injury cases for laborers.
Conway, a Democrat (by 1897 already a member of the Party's State Central Committee),[2] was elected Clerk of the Circuit Court of Wood County in 1890 at the age of twenty-two, and held the office for two terms.
In 1906, he was the Democratic nominee for Congress from the 10th District,[4] but lost to Republican Elmer A. Morse.
Conway died at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, on December 15, 1926, and was described in his obituary as "active in state Democratic politics".