Conestoga Wagon

C.W. Jefferys' notes about this picture from The Picture Gallery of Canadian History Volume 2

The Conestoga wagon was so called after the Conestoga Valley in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where this type of vehicle was developed. Wagons such as this, though generally larger, and drawn by four or six horses, carried most of the freight to the American west, before the railroad came, over the Alleghany Mountains by the great National Highway to Pittsburg and beyond. While the wagon here shown is probably the only specimen of its kind in Canada, the farm wagons generally in use during the period most likely were constructed on similar lines. Many of the settlers of Waterloo County came from this region of Pennsylvania, and were members of pacifist sects, Mennonists, Tunkers, etc., who had migrated from Germany earlier in the eighteenth century.