Those of our readers who have closely followed the family history as it has been unfolded to them, unbiased by comment, in the pages of The Owl, and who have studied the statistics, marriages, wills, deeds, letters, sermons and the occasional words which have come down to us, must be forcibly struck with the tremendous importance of the study in gaining an insight into our own characters, as well as a knowledge of the influences which have determined our environment and precipitated the events of our lives.

The intermingled blood of Deborah, daughter of fierce old Stephen Bachelder, and that of Rev. John, forceful and daring preacher, has made us a race of independent thinkers, reformers, and social revolutionists from the time of Daniel and Stephen of Sandwich down to John Mansir of Chicago. We have helped to organize advanced ideas in religion. We helped to start the first anti-slavery movement at Quaker Hill. We have been active in all movements for peaceful revolution in educational methods, moral and social reforms. We point with pride to the fact that it is a characteristic of the Wings to cut away from the things of the past when new and better and higher ideals are presented to them.

Of the three sons of John and Deborah who remained in New England, Daniel and Stephen became Quakers and members of the first organized Quaker meeting in America. The Quaker religion was a great advance in thought, practical religion and broad love of man over the narrow ideas and prejudices of the Puritan. It required manhood and womanhood of vigorous quality to espouse its tenets, but Daniel and Stephen were faithful to the end. They stood with a devoted little band for religious tolerence and liberty of thought; so had their grandsire Bachellor and their father. They sought no political honors, they abhorred war, they esteemed beyond all else the quiet pastoral life and the privileges of the meeting house. Their sons and grandsons in migrating from the home nest at Sandwich sought communities where friends lived. And so they went to Rochester, Hanover, Dartmouth and other nearby communities where they were within close call of the Monthly Meeting. When the third and fourth generation of New England settlers took flight from the old Bay province it was to go to Smithfield and Prudence Island in Rhode Island, Quaker Hill in New York and to those settlements in Maine where Friends lived. They were very generally farmers.

The single exception we now recall is that of Nathaniel, first born of Stephen. Nathaniel became a soldier in the King Philip War and he married "out of meeting." These events seem to have marked the parting of the ways with his family, and he moved to a neighborhood among the relatives of his wife. His grandchildren became soldiers in the war of the revolution; they were pioneers and adventured the wilderness of Maine, and their lives broadened and expanded in the contact with the world. But the race of Nathaniel was generally a God-fearing one.

Bachelor, son of Daniel, like his cousin Nathaniel, married a Hatch, and he too, went out from Sandwich to another settlement and we fail to find anything to mark his connection with the Quaker religion. His grandsons were revolutionists with guns in their hands.

A notable exception was that of Samuel, son of John of Rochester, and his sons David, Stephen and Samuel. But their revolutionary tendencies seem to mark the parting with the religion of their fathers. Those Wings who entered the revolutionary war service seemed at the same time to sever their connection with the Society of Friends.

We can find no fact clearly pointing to the conclusion that any Wing ever espoused the cause of the King in the Revolutionary War. War was an abomination to most of them as Quakers, and their attitude seems to have been that of passive resistance and a determination to live up to their religious beliefs. The settled order of things seems to have appealed the more strongly to them, however. They took little part in the agitation at Sandwich and Barnstable carried on by Otis, Freeman and others against the King. True, some of them united with local malitia companies in the protection of their homes from the threatened forays of the British along the coast, but few, if any, of the Quaker Wings became soldiers and men of war. It is true that at Quaker Hill the Wings were classed by one of Washington's officers as Tories, but we believe that the position of Edward, Abraham, Jedediah and their sons was one of studied neutrality. The same may be said of the Wings of Dartmouth, Smithfield and the few venturesome families who had wandered off into the vicinity of Albany, New York.

And so Benjamin, Daniel, Jabez, Abraham, Paul, Josephus, Barnabas and Samuel, grandsons of Daniel, and Edward, Benjamin, Thomas, John, Elihu, Gershom, Elisha, Clifton, Joseph, Ebenezer, David and Jonathan, grandsons of Stephen, lived quietly through the stormy period of American revolt, tilled the soil and milked their cows, attended meeting on First Day with regularity and prayed for an end to the fratricidal strife and that peace would again return to the distracted land. They, too, were revolutionists, but of another type.

John of Harwich was the oldest son of the Rev. John and Deborah. His removal from Sandwich took place about the time of the beginning of the Quaker movement there. We have frequently thought that his migration might have been caused by this agitation, in which his two brothers took so active a part. March 1, 1659, the Plymouth Court "taking notice that John Wing is erecting a building in a place that is out of the bounds of the township of Yarmouth" ordered that he be prohibited from doing so until the boundary line is clearly defined. The exact date of John's settlement in Harwich has never been determined, but the fact that he was erecting buildings in the Spring of 1659, indicates that his removal was made at a time when the Quaker persecutions at Sandwich were at their height.

We search the records in vain to find some fraternal connection between the family and those of his brothers Daniel and Stephen after his removal. In March, the same year of his building in Harwich, John appeared at Plymouth in behalf of his brother Daniel and, pursuant to an old English law, had Daniel's estate administered upon in the life time of the latter. This was in effect a brankruptcy proceeding and was taken, doubtless, to relieve Daniel from the payment of the numerous fines imposed upon him by the Plymouth Court during the Quaker persecutions. It was the fact of this administration which led Dr. Conway Wing to write that Daniel had died in 1659, while as a matter of fact, he had children born to him, and lived for nearly thirty years after this court proceeding.

John's children and grandchildren were generally members of the Puritan church. They heartily espoused the cause of the colonies against the mother country. They were active in the armies of Washington and in the fleets of the privateersmen. Many of them were enrolled in the regular Continental Army, and the records of the Civil War reveal that their descendants were still patriotic and martial in their ardor, several of them attaining rank and distinction in civil and military life.

The only distinctive act attributed to any of the Wings showing a disloyalty to the cause of the Americans was that of Abraham Thomas Wing, the brawny blacksmith who led the farmers of Quaker Hill in resistance to the American officers who sought to impress their teams and wagons to carry wounded American soldiers from the improvised hospital in tthe meeting-house at the Hill. This led the American officer in commond to write to Washington that all the Quakers on the Hill with one or two exceptions, were Tories. Abraham Thomas himself, however, was enrolled in the Dutchess Country militia on the side of the colonists.

Deborah, daughter of Abraham Wing of Glen's Falls, married Daniel Jones, a brother of David Jones, so famous in American history as the betrothed lover of the hapless Jane McCrea. Daniel was one of the earliest settlers in Queensbury, and contributed much to the development of its water power and resources. He was himself a millwright and a part owner of a grist and saw mill and of islands in the river, which he afterwards conveyed to Abraham Wing, and one of which bears the name of Wing's Island to this day. At the outbreak of the Revolution he adhered to the royal party, and with other loyalists fled to Canada. The property which he left was confiscated and sold after the war. In a letter to his father-in-law he communicated the death of his wife in child-bed in Montreal, March 28, 1782, and of the infant four months afterward. After the war he settled in Brockville, Upper Canada, where he received from the Crown a large grant of land in compensation for his losses, and where his descendants still reside and are people of considerable influence. His son Richard was arrested during the war and imprisoned for a while at Albany as a Loyalist and Tory, but was released through the intercession of his more patriotic father-in-law, Abraham Wing.

To offset the neutrality of the Quaker members of the family and their apparent indifference to the struggle between colonists and crown, the war records of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New York show that forty-five descendents of Deborah were enrolled in the patriot army as revolutionists.

Revolutionary Records

Asa Wing, from the pension rolls of Maine, private, 4th Regiment; died Nov 17, 1814. Names of heirs placed on pension roll Nov 13, 1817 at the rate of $48 annually: Deborah, William, Daniel, John, David, Asa and Permerico

David Wing, from New York in the Revolution, pg 253, the estate of David Wing with others was confiscated and sold under a law passed Oct 21, 1799

Gideon Wing, from the pension rolls of Maine, private; $96; Virginia; placed on roll Feb 13, 1819; 77 years old; died Feb 24, 1821; residence, Kennebec County

Israel Wing, from the Pennsylvania pension roll, private, N.H. line; $96 per year; placed on pension roll Jan 8, 1819; transferred from Maine

Joseph Wing, from Historical Sketch of Rochester, pg 79: "Joseph Wing of Rochester was a member of the 2d Foot Company of militia that responded to the Lexington Alarm, April 19, 1775."

Moses Wing, from the pension rolls of Maine; surgeon's mate; Mass. line; residence, Kennebec County

Nathan Wing, from the pension rolls of Maine, private; $96; Mass. line; placed on roll March 20, 1818, aged 72; dropped under Act of May 1, 1820; restored June 18, 1824; residence, Somerset County

Nathan Wing, from a list of revolutionary war soldiers living in Maine, Gorham; died at Abbott, April 10, 1838; wife Love living at Abbott

Samuel Wing, from a list of revolutionary war soldiers living in Maine, lieutenant; residence Wells; died at Wells, Jan 28, 1818; wife Lois, living at Kennebec