The Project Gutenberg EBook of Conestoga Wagons in Braddock's Campaign,
1755, by Don H. Berkebile

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Title: Conestoga Wagons in Braddock's Campaign, 1755

Author: Don H. Berkebile

Release Date: August 10, 2009 [EBook #29653]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CONTRIBUTIONS FROM
THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY:
PAPER 9

CONESTOGA WAGONS IN
BRADDOCKS CAMPAIGN, 1755

_Don H. Berkebile_

_By Don H. Berkebile_

_CONESTOGA WAGONS IN BRADDOCK'S CAMPAIGN_, 1755

_More than 200 years have passed since the Pennsylvania farm wagon, the
ancestral form of the Conestoga wagon, first won attention through
military service in the French and Indian War. These early wagons, while
not generally so well known, were the forerunners of the more popular
Conestoga freighter of the post-Revolutionary period and also of the
swaying, jolting prairie schooners that more recently carried hopeful
immigrants to the western territories._

THE AUTHOR: _Don H. Berkebile is on the exhibits staff of the
Smithsonian Institution's United States National Museum._

In a speech to the Pennsylvania Assembly on December 19, 1754, Governor
Morris suggested a law that would "settle and establish the wages" to be
paid for the use of the wagons and horses which soon were to be pressed
into military service for the expedition against Fort DuQuesne.[1] His
subsequent remarks on the subject were all too indicative of the
difficulties which were later to arise. The Assembly however, neglected
to pass such an act, and the Maryland and Virginia Assemblies were
equally lax in making provision for General Braddock's transportation.

Sir John St. Clair had told Braddock, shortly after his arrival in the
colonies in late February 1755, "of a great number of Dutch settlers, at
the foot of a mountain called the Blue Ridge, who would undertake to
carry by the hundred the provisions and stores...."[2] St. Clair was
confident he could have 200 wagons and 1,500 pack horses at