ABRAHAM WING

A report by John Austin.

The founder of Glens Falls was Abraham Wing. While the community has its Red Wings hockey team and Wing Street, between Sanford and Hunter, the major memorial to the Quaker pioneer is the school that is now celebrating its 50 th anniversary.

Abraham Wing would be proud to know that the District 18 school is named for him. He was adventurous and a man of independence and spirit. The Abraham Wing School is operated by one of the few common school districts in New York State, in fact the only common school district in the state that lies within the bounds of a city.

Abraham Wing was born at Dartmouth, Massachusetts, not far from the Atlantic Ocean, in 1721, more than 265 years ago. He died at Queensbury in 1795, so that just 8 years from now we will be observing the 200 th anniversary of his death. He and his wife are buried in the lot at the corner of Quaker Road and Bay Road, toward the corner in front of Doyle’s store. The early Quakers who were buried there do not have tombstones because they did not believe in ornamentation. However, a rugged monument was erected to Abraham Wing’s memory there by his family in later years, and you can see it today.

When he was in his 20s, Abraham Wing moved with a young wife and two children to the Quaker Hill neighborhood of Dutchess County, New York, then a pioneering area east of the Hudson River. Abraham and his wife, Anstis, had eight more children there. He was a farmer and businessman, and accumulated enough money to buy the rights to the Queensbury Patent, a large tract that includes the southern two-thirds of what is today the Town of Queensbury, including the City of Glens Falls.

At first, the proprietors planned to establish the settlement of Halfway Brook, north of Glens Falls, about where the Glen Street Price Chopper is now located. Abraham Wing thought it would be more advantageous to place the hub of the community on the Hudson River, and his plans were followed.

He oversaw the division of the Queensbury Patent into house lots, farms and woodlots, acquiring in his own name two of the sections on which the principal portion of Glens Falls is now located. He came here in 1763 for a few weeks to look over the territory. Two years later he brought his family and Quaker friends here, and three log houses were soon built. He erected a grist mill and saw mill on the Hudson River near the present Finch, Pruyn mill. His store and tavern building was located on the corner of Warren and Ridge Streets, where CB Sports has a retail store at this time. He was elected the first supervisor of Queensbury in 1766, holding that important job each year until after the Revolution.

Dr. A. W. Holden, an early Queensbury historian, describes Abraham Wing in this way:   “He was looked up to as the great man of the place, the merchant, the lawyer, the minister and the innkeeper united in one.”

Probably because he was a Quaker and adhered to the pacifist view of that religion, he took no side in the Revolutionary struggle that was going on at that time. Because of the War and the Indian troubles, the settlement was abandoned in 1786, the families moving back south to Dutchess County. With the return of peace, however, many of the Quakers returned, together with other settlers from New England and southern New York, and the community grew in size rapidly. Abraham Wing attended Quaker services at the log school and meeting house located at Bay and Quaker Roads, the site of the above mentioned burial grounds.

In 1794, Abraham Wing made his will, leaving his large farm of 342 acres and his other property to his wife, for her lifetime, and then to his son, Benjamin. His wife lived until 1807.

There were two other Abraham Wings of those early days. Abraham Wing, Jr. was a younger son of the pioneer. He was very active in politics during the Revolution, and got himself into great difficulty because of his enthusiasm. He was convicted of forging a deed and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment in New York City, leaving his wife to raise seven young children. She did a good job of it, one of those children being Abraham Wing III, who himself became a leading lumberman and banker of the community, remembered for great charity to his fellow citizens.

There are still some Wing descendents here and across the United States, but the most meaningful memorial to Abraham Wing is the fine brick school on Lawrence Street, not too many blocks from his original log house, from his Hudson River mills, from his store and tavern.