Conestoga is a town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. These conveyances were made with very broad wheels, to go on miry roads.
1783. [Major-general Lee] begrudged the expence of a nurse in his last illness, and died in a small dirty room in the Philadelphia tavern called the Canastoe-waggon, [designed chiefly for the entertainment and accommodation of common countrymen] attended by no one but a French servant, and Mr. Oswald the printer, who once served as an officer under him.—William Gordon, ‘History of the American Revolution,’ iv. 306 (Lond., 1788).
1808. The throng of Pittsburg and Conestoga waggons.—The Balance, Feb. 16, p. 28.
1843. The loads he had in his earlier days seen crammed into a Conestogo [sic] wagon.—B. R. Hall (‘Robert Carlton’), ‘The New Purchase,’ i. 137.
1846. In the back ground stood four large Connestoga waggons, with ample canvas tops, and one dearborn, all tastefully drawn up in a crescent form.—Rufus B. Sage, ‘Scenes in the Rocky Mountains,’ p. 17 (Phila.).
*** Bartlett, giving (as usual with him) no date, cites Jennings on The Horse, p. 61: “The vast, white-topped wagons, drawn by superb teams of the stately Conestogas.” This I have not been able to verify. The word stoga or stogy (q.v.), used of shoes, and also of cigars, appears to come from Conestoga. See ‘Dialect Notes,’ i. 229 (Ky., Mich.). See also Notes and Queries, 11 S. iii. 315.
