Wagner
also Wegner, Wegener
The wagon-maker — the trade that built the wagons that won the West.
- Origin
- German
- Famous bearer
- Richard Wagner (1813–1883), composer
- Register
- German family
The seat of Wagner
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Wagner community yet. When the movement opens, you can stand for its leadership, or help elect whoever does.
Current mission
No shared goal set yet. Once Wagner has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Wagner clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.
Help rebuild the Wagner clan →What does the Wagner name mean?
The wagon-maker or cartwright, Middle High German wagener. The wheelwright who built and shod the carts and wagons was one of the most demanding trades of all, combining the skills of the joiner, the wheelwright and the smith. The Low German form is Wegner.
The history of Wagner
To build a wagon was to master three trades at once: the joiner's frame, the wheelwright's dished and shrunk-iron wheel, and the smith's tyre and fittings. A good Wagner was rarer and more valued than a smith alone, because the wagon was the truck of its age — without it nothing moved to market, to mill or to war.
That is the trade behind the name's proudest American chapter. The Conestoga wagon — the great broad-wheeled freight wagon that carried goods over the Appalachians and seeded the prairie schooner of the westward migration — was built by the German wagon-makers of the Conestoga valley in Pennsylvania. The vehicle that more than any other physically moved the American frontier west was, by trade and by name, a Wagner's work.
Explore With Your Ancestors · Beta
Pick any year from 500 to 1945 and any place on earth — the Wagner country, or a shore no Wagner ever reached. The chronicler sets the scene; the deeds are yours.
Notable bearers of the Wagner name
- Richard Wagner (1813–1883), composer