50 years ago, I discovered the beautiful but rare Sternberg Conestoga wagon, dated 1803 on its tailgate. At the time, 1965, I was the guest of Gertrude Sternberg who lived down the street from the Berks County Historical Society, and she was showing me her personal property in her second floor of her mansion’s carriage house. A pillar of her community, she had stored the family’s Conestoga wagon in the carriage house after they had exhibited it in a historic parade in Reading.
The original Sternberg farm was in the Oley Valley and was a prominent farm that shipped grain to the Colonial port of Philadelphia. Thus, the Sternberg family had an ideal eight bow Conestoga wagon with a homespun cover to protect their cargo in case of inclement weather. Eight bow covered wagons were usually pulled by six-horse teams because of the abundance of cargo they hauled.
But, in the 19th century, eight or even 12 bow Conestogas were driven by as many as eight or 10 teams of horses delivering their cargo to sea captains in the Colonial port of Philadelphia. Having just purchased the Lobachsville Grist mill, I was in need of a Colonial-style Conestoga wagon and asked Mrs. Sternberg if her family would sell me this typical Colonial American 19th Century Conestoga wagon for my museum grist mill at Lobachsville in the Oley Valley.
After consulting with her brother, I was delighted to hear that they had decided to accept my offer. It was more important to the heritage of the Oley Valley than to Reading. Soon after I acquired this beautiful example of a Conestoga wagon, George Shumway published his book on the Conestoga Wagon 1750 to 1850 from York, Pennsylvania, where he wrote about the Sternberg wagon and included several photographs of it. Having purchased the Sternberg wagon, I was then lucky enough to find the Klar Conestoga homespun wagon cover of Strausstown, Berks County which fit this eight bow wagon perfectly.
Pleased how the Klar cover fit exactly on the bows of the 1803 Sternberg wagon, I realized that both the Klar and Sternberg wagons did not have side tool boxes on their wagon sides, which also was a clue, since only later Conestoga wagons had toolboxes to provide road repairs should they be on the highway too far from home. Kept in original shape, the blue painted sides of the Sternberg Conestoga wagon were original, and the six oak hoops were original as well as the feed box for the horses hooked to the rear end tailgate. It was a wonderful Americana invention that sood for American Civilization from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific plains.
Richard H. Shaner is director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.
