Reverend Thomas W. Conway was assistant commissioner of the Freedmen Bureau in Alabama and Louisiana during the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War. Freedmen's Bureau activities in Louisiana began on June 13, 1865 when the Bureau's commissioner, Oliver O. Howard, appointed Chaplain Thomas W. Conway as the state's assistant commissioner. He published a report for that year, "The Freedmen of Louisiana: Final Report of the Bureau of Free Labor, Department of the Gulf, to Major General Canby, Commanding" (1865). Another seven assistant commissioners would later hold this office.