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.

A skating carnival was to be given, and the club had engaged an Irishman to clear a certain part of the frozen Mississippi of snow for the skating.  This he failed to do at the time specified and the club had it cleaned by some one else.  Claiming that he would have done it, had they waited, the Irishman sued the club.  Colonel Conwell, of course, appeared for the defense.  The whole hundred members marched to the court house, the scene being town talk for some days.  Needless to say he won his suit.

His love for newspaper work led him to start the “Minneapolis Chronicle” and the “Star of the North,” which were afterward merged into “The Minneapolis Tribune,” for which his clever young wife conducted a woman’s column, in a decidedly brilliant, original manner.  Mrs. Conwell wrote from her heart as one woman to other women, and her articles soon attracted notice and comment for their entertaining style and their inspiring, helpful ideas.