This case is a fairly good example of one of the most common causes of action in the Territorial courts. It is an action in debt founded on the alleged non-payment of a "writing obligatory." Here, Joseph Paxton sued Henry W. Conway, alleging that he had failed to pay on a writing obligatory executed October 2, 1821. The court documents do not indicate why Conway owed Paxton the money. At the time of this suit, Conway was serving as the Territory's delegate to Congress. Paxton's attorney, William H. Parrott, filed the declaration with David E. McKinney, clerk of the Superior Court on September 10, 1827, complaining that Conway had given him a writing obligatory for $5,500 in Little Rock; Paxton wanted repayment of this debt as well as $500 in additional damages, bringing his total claims to $6,000.

The writ and summons were executed by Samuel M. Rutherford, sheriff of Pulaski County, by taking Conway into custody in Big Rock Township on September 10, 1827. Conway promptly entered into a bail bond with Superior Court Judge Benjamin Johnson and William E. Woodruff, publisher of the Arkansas Gazette and Public Printer for the Territory, as his securities. It is somewhat interesting that Woodruff was actually the printer of the mass-produced bail bonds on which he, in this case, bound himself. As securities, he and Johnson promised to pay if Conway failed to appear in court or failed to pay any judgment that might be issued against him. The bail bond was signed in the presence of Charles P. Bertrand, who at the time was Woodruff's apprentice. The declaration, summons, and bail bond are the only documents that exist in this case.

Two months later, however, Henry W. Conway was killed in a well-known duel with Robert Crittenden, the Secretary of Arkansas Territory. The historian John Hallum recorded many of the details of Conway's dispute and resulting duel with Crittenden in his Biographical and Pictorial History of Arkansas which was published in 1887:

"In 1827 his [Henry Conway's] right to a third term in congress was warmly and ably contested by his old townsite partner, Robert C. Oden, who was ably supported by Robert Crittenden, another one of the townsite partners. The democratic party was then centering on General Jackson, and party lines were drawn to their utmost tension. These contests often drew after them a history and record of blood. . . . [Conway] was as honest as he was fearless in the expression of his conviction that Crittenden had gone further than his relations warranted in the support of Oden; and that the zeal and ability displayed in the effort to defeat his election was fraught with more than political significance, and challenged him to atone of it on the field of honor. This challenge followed immediately on the heel of his election to a third term.

Crittenden, too, was a man of dauntless courage and exalted ability, but it is said by contemporaries with much force and plausibility, that his support of Oden did not warrant the extremes embraced in Conway's convictions, and, therefore, he replied to the challenge in the following conciliatory language:

‘Mr. Conway, you have been elected by the people three times to serve them as their delegate in congress; you have served them two terms with honor to yourself and satisfaction to them; they now have superior claims on you, go and discharge this obligation to the people, and when you return, if nothing short of what you now demand will satisfy you, I will then meet your demands.'

Conway then published him as a coward, and cut off all honorable accommodation but the field. Major Wharton Rector, of the United States army, acted as the friend of Mr. Conway, and Colonel. Ben. Desha as the friend of Mr. Crittenden.

"The duel was fought on the 29th October, 1827, on an island in the Mississippi, opposite the mouth of the White river. . . . Conway's pistol exploded an instant in advance of his adversary's and the lint flew from the breast of Mr. Crittenden, the ball passing through the lappel of his coat without inflicting any injury. This caused Colonel Desha to lean forward in great anxiety and ask, ‘Mr. Crittenden, are you seriously hurt;' to which he replied in the negative, but said, ‘I fear I have killed Mr. Conway,' who reeled and fell the next moment, pierced through the body, from which he died eleven days afterward."

The Superior Court docket indicates that Paxton formally made the court aware of the Conway's death during the April 1828 Term. Accordingly, the Court ordered that the suit be abated and that the case be continued until the October Term for revivor. Again in the April and October Terms of 1829, the Superior Court justices ordered that the case be continued and there are no further entries in the docket for this case.