The name Conestogo (or “Conestoga”) of the village in the Woolwich area of the Region of Waterloo derives from a location in Lancaster County Pennsylvania located in the southeastern part of that state. This name was transplanted from Pennsylvania to the Waterloo region of Ontario because many of the original settlers of the Waterloo area came from Lancaster Country.
Conestoga Indian Town
For history buffs I dwell at some length on the story of the Indian village called “Conestoga Indian Town” in this article. That article discusses the interplay between the indigenous people and the white settlers of the area.
The indigenous people of the eastern part of North America were initially ravaged by disease. But as the first waves of white settlers came to the Pennsylvania area the two peoples were able to live more or less in harmony.
But as the local whites became more numerous, and more greedy for land in the early 1700s the few remaining indigenous members of the tribe (then called “Conestogas”) were eventually slaughtered by white vigilantes called the Paxton Boys.
This is most likely where the name originated. As I say in the 2nd part of that article: “It is commonly accepted that the name “Conestoga” is derived from the Iroquoian word ‘Kanastoge’ meaning “at the place of the immersed pole”. This is a reference to the river running beside the ancestral village of the local indigenous tribe – the Susquehanna River.
The Susquehanna River was an important element in the lives of both the natives and whites who lived in that area of Pennsylvania. The era we’re talking about is the 1700s in the period before the revolutionary war in what became the United States. Many of the settlers – both indigenous and white – came to what we now call the Waterloo Region of Ontario as a result of the revolutionary war.
What does this have to do with Conestogo Ontario?
The two villages in Pennsylvania and Ontario have more in common than the name. It was because of the loyalty to the British crown of the very Iroquois who had driven the Conestogas to near extinction that the territory along the Grand River in Ontario was given to the Iroquois (under Joseph Brant).
It was also because of the squabbles in the American colonies between native tribes, French speaking fur traders, white settlers and absentee British authorities that native tribes like the Conestogas were driven to extinction and the United States was eventually formed.
And it was because of those revolutionary developments that the Iroquois of New York and many of the German speaking residents of Lancaster County Pennsylvania ended up in the Grand River area and created communities along that river like Waterloo, Kitchener, Brantford, Galt, and, of course, Conestogo.
What came first? Village or River?
Actually it is not correct to suggest that Conestogo Ontario was named after the town called Conestoga in Lancaster Pennsylvania. As I mentioned earlier, “Conestoga Indian Town” was the Indian village where the remnants of the Susquehannock nation resided from roughly the early 1700s till the few remaining members (then called “Conestogas” were slaughtered by white vigilantes.
There is some controversy as to the exact location of the Indian village called “Conestoga”. But in any event, the early Pennsylvania Mennonite settlers of Waterloo County (in Ontario) did not name the village of Conestogo after the Indian village in Pennsylvania. It was the river in Waterloo County that was first called the Conestoga River. The village of Conestoga came later. And the change of spelling to Conestogo came even later.
The Historical Record
The story (taken from Ezra Eby’s A Biographic History of Waterloo Township) took place in 1806. This was just a few years after the first Mennonite settlers started arriving in the Waterloo region from Lancaster County.
Two men from the Lancaster Mennonite community were scoping out the northern part of the Waterloo area. Their purpose was to see for themselves what potential lay there for themselves and others back in Lancaster County. Here is how it is described by Ezra Eby. Local residents of Woolwich township will recognize many of these names:
“Benjamin Eby and Henry Brubacher, two young men from Lancaster County, arrived at George Eby’s, who had settled on the old J. Y. Shantz farm a little to the south-east of Berlin on the 24th day of May, 1806. They came on horseback. The object of their coming was to make a thorough inspection of the nature of the country in which their relatives had so largely invested.
During the first week in June [1806] these two parties in company with George Eby made a trip through the northern part of this Township and Woolwich. They left old Abraham Erb’s place early in the morning and made a trip through the dense forest northward, crossing what are now the farms of Joseph M. Weber, Menno S. Weber and Moses Shantz.
They crossed into Woolwich a little west of Martins Meeting House and made their way straight across the farms of Aaron S. Shantz, Paul Martin and Levi Cress, arriving on the south side of the Conestogo River about fifteen rods below where now is the St. Jacobs Bridge and E. W. B. Snider’s Roller mills.”
Here Benjamin Eby made the remark that this stream with its beautiful rising on the north side, bears a strong resemblance to their Conestogo in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to which George Eby replied, “Then this stream shall be called ‘The Conestogo,’” which name it has borne ever since.”
Conestoga or Conestogo?
Just a note on the current spelling “Conestogo” (with an “o”). I believe this is probably a mistake on the part of Ezra Eby. In fact the original spelling was “Conestoga” (with an “a”) until it was changed in 1865 by the Conestoga(o) Postmaster of the day. Since Eby was writing in 1895-1896 he would have been familiar with the “o” version of the name.
The village of Conestogo(a) came somewhat later, in roughly 1830. It was established by its founder David Musselman who purchased the land where the original village now stands, and built the first sawmill in Woolwich on Spring Creek (in roughly 1840). Then in 1844 he dammed the Conestoga River and built the first flour mill in Woolwich.
“Conestoga” was an appropriate name for the village because it is located where the Conestoga(o) River flows into the Grand.
I believe remnants of both of Musselman’s mills still remain. Perhaps sometime in the future I will post some photographs of historic buildings and points of interest in present day Conestogo.
I also hope to do more research into the pre-white settlement of the area around Conestogo. This land was passed in the late 1700s and early 1800s to the Pennsylvania Mennonites through a transfer from Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant the leader of the Six Nation Grand River settlement.
The lands along the Grand River had been granted to the Six Nations by the British Crown after the American Revolutionary War. The Crown had purchased them from the Mississaugas. Perhaps in the future I will discover more about the Mississaugas and any settlements they or other native tribes may have had in the area of Conestogo.
This article is taken from material previously published in “The View from Conestogo”.