Fort Edward: Old Fort House auction is Sat.: Wing & Bronk family items

By Cathy DeDe, Chronicle Managing Editor

This Saturday’s annual Antique Country Fair Auction on the lawn of the Old Fort House Museum on Broadway in Fort Edward promises to be “exceptional,” touts R. Paul McCarty, the museum’s executive director and Fort Edward’s town historian.

It will include numerous items from the estate of Marjorie and Judith Bronk, the last of the Bronk Coal and Lumber Company family in Hudson Falls, as well as donated items from Robert Bailey, a many-generations direct descendant of Glens Falls’s founding Wing family.

The Bronk sisters, long-time Hudson Falls teachers, lived together nearly all of their lives in Hudson Falls, Mr. McCarthy said. Their cousin William Bronk, who also lived in Hudson Falls, was a poet who won the National Book Award.

Marjorie, born in 1930, passed away in May 2025. Judith, known as Judy, was born in 1941 and passed in May 2022.

Sales proceeds from their estate will benefit the Old Fort House and the Fort Edward Historical Society.

Auction items include Fort Edward Stoneware, vintage Watt pottery, Wedgwood pieces, furniture, tea sets and needlework made by the sisters themselves.

“They were both such collectors,” Mr. McCarty says — pottery, glassware, furniture, works on paper, needlework, jewelry, crafts and much more.

He said the collection is so large, not all could be sorted and catalogued for this year’s auction. It’ll carry at least into next year’s event, he said, possibly beyond.

Some items from the estate will be added to the museum collection, Mr. McCarty, including family documents and furniture made by the sisters’ great grandfather. Mr. McCarty said he expects to have an exhibit at a later date.

“It’s significant,” he says of the potential impact of both collections for the financially challenged Old Fort House and Fort Edward Historical Society, though “not a game changer.”

Wing family items, also

The auction also includes about 30 items donated by Bob Bailey of Connecticut, a descendant of Abraham Wing, founder of what is now Glens Falls but was originally Wing’s Falls.

“Bob is a many times great-grandson,” Mr. McCarty said, adding that he is a trove of Wing and Bronk stories.

Mr. McCarty said Mr. Bailey is a longtime museum supporter who has donated numerous items for the Fort House historical collection. With his most recent such gift, “He said he had some other things that we might want to add to the auction,” Mr. McCarty said.

These include numerous books, as Mr. Bailey is “a real bibliophile,” Mr. McCarty said. He displayed a thick, oversized book of Currier and Ives prints as an example.

Mr. Bailey was not available to speak with The Chronicle prior to the sale.

The Wing family connection is of especial note, Mr. McCarty said.

“The Wings were very astute businessmen, so they came from Glens Falls down to Fort Edward, because of the new canal that was being built,” in the 1800s.

In 2015, Mr. Bailey’s sister Kit Cornell donated family documents dating back to the early 1700s, many in Abraham Wing’s own handwriting, to the SUNY Adirondack college library in Queensbury.

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