Conestoga Town is an historic
archaeological site
An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...
memorializing the
Native American tribal
village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...
which stood on the site from the late 17th into the mid-18th-century; it is located at what is now
Manor Township in
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Lancaster County (; Pennsylvania Dutch: Lengeschder Kaundi), sometimes nicknamed the Garden Spot of America or Pennsylvania Dutch Country, is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in the south central part of Pennsylvania. ...
. The town is a settlement at the southern end of the once vast range of the Susquehannock nation or Conestoga
Indian nation, which once extended from the northern reaches of Maryland to the along the southern width of southern New York State and southern Catskills where a related people, the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy held western settlement in check for 200 years. Their territory encompassed the entire
drainage basin
A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...
of the
Susquehanna River
The Susquehanna River (; Lenape: Siskëwahane) is a major river located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, overlapping between the lower Northeast and the Upland South. At long, it is the longest river on the East Coast of the ...
which shares the tribe's root name and extended to the
drainage divide
A drainage divide, water divide, ridgeline, watershed, water parting or height of land is elevated terrain that separates neighboring drainage basins. On rugged land, the divide lies along topographical ridges, and may be in the form of a singl ...
s of the flanking mountains both to the East to the Delaware nation and to the West to Shawnee lands. The town is the earliest established known surviving settlement of the tribe, and it is known that William Penn himself visited to negotiate with the tribal leaders. The site is also one known to be among the last occupied of the
Susquehannock
The Susquehannock people, also called the Conestoga by some English settlers or Andastes were Iroquoian Native Americans who lived in areas adjacent to the Susquehanna River and its tributaries, ranging from its upper reaches in the southern p ...
town sites in Pennsylvania as they faded into obscurity.
Throughout the majority of the seventeenth century, the Susquehannock-Conestoga were a strong fierce Indian people who also came to be known locally as the Conestogas (meaning "Buried Pole Place" or "town," much like "Can-ah Da" means "Buried Pole Place" or "town" in other Iroquois languages). Excavations revealed log-cabin like structures and cemeteries. The village was occupied from the 1690s to about 1725—well after the collapse of the Susquehannock nation in the 1670s,
after which the village moved to different sites within a 414-acre tract. It was an important meeting place between various Native American tribes and Pennsylvania government officials, including
William Penn
William Penn ( – ) was an English writer and religious thinker belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, a North American colony of England. He was an early advocate of democracy a ...
.
Of the early neighbors of Conestoga we find that thirty eight of them were signers of the petition in 1728 to create the county of Lancaster, out of 188 signers from the entire county. The Jones the Hendrickes, Postlethwaites, Gales, Swifts, Linvills, Worleys, Pattersons, McCurrys, Bakers, Middletons, and Wilkinses, Hughs, Willises, Mitchells, Brians, Powells, and Ludford representing the English. Stoneman, Steh, man, Ferr, Barr, Punk, Lemon, Hans, packer, Miller and others representing the German-Swiss. All signed it.
The Court records in Chester county as to Conestoga township in those days show that both the English and the Swiss took part in public affairs.
The beginning of the little group of houses called Conestoga town started in 1715 by James Hendricks, who in that year secured the right to 1,166 acres of land, reaching from Rock Hill up the
Conestoga River
The Conestoga River, also referred to as Conestoga Creek, is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed August 8, 2011 tributary of the Susquehanna River flowing through the cente ...
, eight miles— almost to Wabank and east along and south of "Stehman's run," nearly to New Danville Old Mennonite Church. This settlement differed from the Pequea settlement to the east. While the Pequea colony, at Willow Street, were all Swiss Mennonites, the settlement along the Conestoga consisted of a Scotch-Irish and English core, bordering on both sides of that river, surrounded by scores of German-Swiss on all sides.
[Historical Papers and Addresses of the Lancaster County ..., Volume 19]
In 1763, the
Paxton Boys
The Paxton Boys were Pennsylvania's most aggressive colonists according to historian Kevin Kenny. While not many specifics are known about the individuals in the group their overall profile is clear. Paxton Boys Lived in hill country northwest of ...
raided a later Conestoga Town village.
[ ''Note:'' This includes ]
It was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 1973.
CONESTOGA TOWN, LANCASTER COUNTY, PA.jpg , Marker on the roadside
CONESTOGA TOWN, MANOR TWP., LANCASTER COUNTY, PA.jpg , Plaque
See also
Conestoga, Pennsylvania
Conestoga is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Conestoga Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. At the 2010 census the population was 1,258. The Conestoga post office serves ZIP code 17516.
...
References
{{National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania
Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania
Archaeological sites in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Native American history of Pennsylvania
Susquehannock
National Register of Historic Places in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania