It was founded by Henry Wharton Conway of Greene County, Tennessee, who had come to the state of Arkansas in 1820 with his younger brother James and his cousins Elias and Wharton Rector, all of whom were deputy-surveyors under the patronage of their uncle, William Rector, Surveyor General of Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas.
The Conway-Johnson family developed following a fatal duel between former friends Robert Crittenden and Henry Wharton Conway on October 27, 1827, near Napoleon, Arkansas.
Henry Conway had married the daughter of Benjamin Johnson, a superior court judge in Arkansas Territory.
Sevier had married a sister of Robert Ward Johnson, a member of a powerful Kentucky political family.
Johnson served as a Congressman and US Senator from Arkansas in the antebellum years and was part of The Family.