Shortly after passing his examination at the bar and receiving his degree, he was married at Chicopee Falls, March 8, 1865, to Miss Jennie P. Hayden, one of his pupils in the district school at West Granville, Massachusetts, and later one of his most proficient music scholars. Her brothers were in his company, and when Company F was in camp at Springfield after the first enlistment, she was studying at Wilbraham and there often saw her soldier lover. Anxious days and years they were for her that followed, as they were for every other woman with father, husband, brother or sweetheart in the terrible conflict that raged so long. But she endured them with that silent bravery that is ever the woman's part, that strong, steady courage that can sit at home passive, patient, never knowing but that life-long sorrow and heartache are already at the threshold. Immediately after their marriage, they went West and finally settled in Minneapolis. Colonel Conwell opened a law office, and while waiting for clients acted as agent for a real estate firm in the sale of land warrants. He also began to negotiate for the sale of town lots. This not being enough for a man who utilized every minute, he became local correspondent for the "St. Paul Press." Nor did he stop here, though most men would have thought their hands by this time about full. He took an active part in local politics and canvassed the settlement and towns for the Republican and temperance tickets. He also was actively interested in the schools, and not only advocated public schools and plenty of them, but was a frequent visitor to the city and district schools, talking to the children in that interesting, entertaining way that always clothes some helpful lesson in a form long to be remembered. True to the faith he had found in the little Southern hospital, he joined the First Baptist Church of Saint Paul. But mere joining was not sufficient. He must work for the cause, and he opened a business men's noon prayer-meeting in his law office at Minneapolis, rather a novel undertaking in those days and in the then far West. For three months, only three men attended. But nothing daunted, he persevered. That trait in his character always shone out the more brightly, the darker the outlook. Those three men were helped, and that was sufficient reason that the prayer-meeting be continued. Eventually it prospered and resulted finally in a permanent organization from which grew the Minneapolis Y.M.C.A. Poor though he was, and he started in the West with nothing, he made friends everywhere. His speeches soon made him widely known. His sincerity, his unselfish desire to help others, his earnestness to aid in all good works brought him, as always, a host of loyal, devoted followers. A skating club of some hundred members made him their President, and his first law case in the West came to him through this position.