Martin Franklin CONWAY, Congress, KS (1827-1882)

CONWAY, Martin Franklin, a Representative from Kansas; born at “Bretons Hill,” near Fallston, Harford County, Md., November 19, 1827; received a liberal schooling; moved to Baltimore, Md., in 1843; learned the art of printing and became an organizer of the National Typographical Union; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1852 and commenced practice in Baltimore; moved to Kansas in 1853 and continued the practice of law; also an agent in Kansas for the Massachusetts Abolition Society; member of the first legislative council July 2, 1854; member of the Kansas Free State convention in 1855; chief justice of the supreme court under the Topeka constitution of provisional government in 1856 and 1857; president of the Leavenworth constitutional convention of 1858; upon the admission of Kansas as a State into the Union was elected as a Republican to the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses and served from January 29, 1861, to March 3, 1863; member of the peace convention of 1861 held in Washington, D.C., in an effort to devise means to prevent the impending war; appointed by President Johnson United States consul at Marseilles, France, on June 10, 1866, and served until April 16, 1869, when he retired from public life because of ill health; returned to Washington, D.C., where he died February 15, 1882; interment in Rock Creek Cemetery.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present