February 29, 1892

The obituary of Elias Nelson Conway appeared in the Arkansas Democrat. He had died the day before after falling headfirst into his fireplace. Conway—born into an extended kinship group known as “The Family,” which dominated the politics of early Arkansas—was elected the fifth governor of Arkansas (his brother James Sevier Conway had been Arkansas’s first governor). He served as governor longer than anyone until Orval Faubus, a century later. His eight years in office relatively prosperous for the growing state. The mounting tensions that led to the Civil War began to play out during Conway’s second term, and the voters ended the Family’s political domination in the election of 1860 when they rejected Conway’s choice for a successor.