Conestoga wagon

(noun)

A heavy, broad-wheeled covered wagon that was used extensively during the late 18th century and the 19th century in the United States. It was named after the "Conestoga River" or "Conestoga Township" in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and is thought to have been introduced by Mennonite German settlers.

Related Terms

Examples of Conestoga wagon in the following topics:

  • The Economy of the Middle Colonies

    • The colony also became a major producer of pig iron and its products, including the Pennsylvania long rifle and the Conestoga wagon.

  • Settling the Middle Colonies

    • The colony also became a major producer of pig iron and its products, including the Pennsylvania long rifle and the Conestoga wagon.

  • Discontent on the Frontier

    • Colonial relations with American Indian tribes were severely tested following the events of Pontiac's Rebellion and the Conestoga Massacre.
    • Two events in 1763 severely tested colonial relations with American Indian tribes on the frontier: Pontiac's War and the Conestoga Massacre.
    • Many Conestoga were Christian, and they had lived peacefully with their European neighbors for decades.
    • Although there had been no Indian attacks in the area, the Paxton Boys claimed that the Conestoga secretly provided aid and intelligence to the hostiles.
    • On December 14, 1763, more than fifty Paxton Boys marched on the Conestoga homes near Conestoga Town, Millersville, murdered six people, and burned their cabins.

  • The Western Lands

    • In December of 1763, following the end of the French and Indian War and the signing of the Proclamation, a vigilante group made up of Scots-Irish frontiersmen known as the Paxton Boys attacked the local Conestoga, a Susquehannock tribe who lived on land negotiated by William Penn and their ancestors in the 1690s.
    • Many Conestoga were Christian, and they had lived peacefully with their European neighbors for decades.
    • Although there had been no American Indian attacks in the area, the Paxton Boys claimed that the Conestoga secretly provided aid and intelligence to the hostiles.
    • On December 14, 1763, more than fifty Paxton Boys marched on the Conestoga homes near Conestoga Town, Millersville, and murdered six people and burned their cabins.

  • The Migratory Stream

    • To get to the rich new lands of the West Coast, some people sailed for six months, but 400,000 others traveled 2,000 miles in six months in wagon trains that left from Missouri.
    • By 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho.
    • Wagon trails were cleared further and further west, eventually reaching all the way to the Willamette Valley in Oregon.
    • In the "Wagon Train of 1843," some 700 to 1,000 migrants headed for Oregon.
    • Missionary Marcus Whitman led the wagons on the last leg.

  • Oregon and the Overland Trail

    • By 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho.
    • Wagon trails were cleared further and further west, eventually reaching all the way to the Willamette Valley in Oregon.
    • Each year, as more and more settlers brought wagon trains along the trail, new cutoff routes were discovered that made the route shorter and safer.
    • The Overland Trail (also known as the Overland Stage Line) was a stagecoach and wagon trail in the American West during the 19th century.
    • So many wagons traveled the Oregon Trail that ruts are still visible today along some sections.

  • Financial Chaos and Paper Money

    • For example, in 1779, George Washington wrote to John Jay , who was serving as the president of the Continental Congress, "that a wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions".

  • Hooverville

    • A "Hoover wagon" was an automobile with horses hitched to it because the owner could not afford fuel.

  • The Haymarket Affair

    • August Spies , editor of the German-language Arbeiter-Zeitung ("Workers' Times"), spoke to a crowd estimated variously between 600 and 3,000 while standing in an open wagon adjacent to the square on Des Plaines Street.
    • At about 10:30 pm, just as Fielden was finishing his speech, police arrived en masse, marching in formation towards the speakers' wagon, and ordered the rally to disperse.

  • The Mormon Exodus

    • The well organized wagon train migration began in earnest in April 1847, and the period (including the flight from Missouri in 1838 to Nauvoo) known as the Mormon Exodus is, by convention among social scientists, traditionally assumed to have ended with the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869.
    • Wagon train migrations to the far west continued sporadically until the 20th century, but not everyone could afford to uproot and transport a family by railroad, and the transcontinental railroad network only serviced limited main routes.