To the port of Philadelphia by way of six-horse Conestoga wagon teams
Historians record that there were literally a thousand Conestoga wagons from upstate Pennsylvania on their way to sell their valuable harvest to ship captains for hard cash. On almost any road leading to Philadelphia were these Red, White and Blue Conestoga wagons with beautiful homespun white covers protecting their yearly harvest and pulled by six-horse teams of Conestoga horses embellished with Conestoga bells that announced their presence on the highway. But, as teamsters returned home with Philadelphia imports, these Conestoga wagoners drove as far west as Pittsburgh, the gateway to the Ohio River Valley.
In this American farming Republic, these Red, White and Blue wagons of farming commerce were synonymous with our American flag and prosperity. In fact, there was not a village or town that Conestoga wagoners did not count on for feeding and watering their horses or themselves on the long trip to Philadelphia and the return trip home carrying imports and manufactured goods. Although the original Conestoga wagons were invented in the Conestoga Valley of Lancaster County around 1750 to transport heavy loads of commerce and wheat to the port of Philadelphia, these English curved wagon bodies with huge Rhineland Valley wheel ratios were ideal for traveling on the Lancaster Plain and Piedmont Area down to Colonial Philadelphia.
Soon, other wheelwrights realized that the huge rear wheels and smaller front wheels provided a better traveling arrangement and copied this wheel ratio, because in traversing across the mountains, the tall back wheels provided a more secure ride with the cargo being positioned than an old English-styled curved wagon bed to keep the cargo from shifting on route. But eager to overload these Conestogatype wagons to send exports to the port of Philadelphia, early Pennsylvania Deitsch farmers drove these large freight wagons with four or six-horse teams to ensure their endurance. Eventually, the typical eight bow Conestoga wagons used by area farmers and their Lancaster neighbors were lengthened to as many as 10 or more hoops to make those longer trips to Pittsburgh, which marked the beginning of Western expansion of the United States.
In the 18th and early 19th Centuries, local wagoners made a living exporting to Philadelphia and hauling imports to the Oley Valley to the Ohio River Valley. The Sternbergh family, for one, who had a farm near Jacksonwald in the Oley Valley, was lucky enough to have acquired an 1803 dated Conestoga wagon from Rehrersburg. This wagon was of the typical size of the earlier Conestoga wagons of the Colonial period in the Oley Valley. Later though, the American Folklife Society (now Institute) in the 1970s purchased the Gertrude Sternbergh Conestoga wagon, which was used on their Oley Valley farm.
The Society was also fortunate to buy the frontier Conestoga homespun cover for the Klar Conestoga wagon of Bernville whose farm family used the cover to spread under fruit trees, which they would shake to catch pears and apples. Ironically, the Klar homespun wagon cover fit the Colonial Sternbergh wagon exactly. Daniel Klar was a Berks County Conestoga wagoner of the frontier period, and his name was written in bold black paint on the side of this wagon cover. And, according to Conestoga expert, Dr. George Shumway, the Sternbergh Conestoga wagon was the earliest wagon ever dated in the United States- a superb example of ingenuity found in America.