The Doan Gang

My family doesn’t have particularly many claims to fame and fortune. One of my uncles on my father’s side (the Coopers) was John Broadus Watson, who invented behavioural psychology (and of the infamous ‘Little Albert’ psychology experiment, doubtless one of the reasons IRBs were created). However, my aunt, coming back from a Doane Family Association meeting in Massachusetts, told me that the Doane family (my mother’s side) had a branch which was also rather infamous and deserving of their own Wikipedia page. Naturally, I was interested to see who they were, and how we were related to them.

The relationship is pretty distant, though they are certainly present in the Doane family genealogy. My great-great-great-grandfather Adelbert Doane was the scion of three generations of Benjamin Doanes, then Simeon Doane, then Samuel Doan, then John Doan, Jr and Deacon John Done of Plymouth, Massachusetts (who had immigrated there in 1630 from London; prior to that he was very likely a shoemaker from Alvechurch, Worcs). One of John Doan Jr’s brothers was Daniel Doan, who went on to have a son and a grandson both named Daniel, the last of whom lived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (a Loyalist Quaker enclave where the Coopers, my father’s family who came over later, were also fairly prominent). Daniel Israel Doan (the third one) had a son, Joseph, whose sons became quite infamous in Bucks County as the Doan Gang.

During the War of American Independence, these Doans were fiercely loyal to the Crown, particularly Moses Doan, who had quite a colourful history. Apparently a rather stubborn and wilful teenager, he had a falling-out with his father in 1770, after which he left home, defended a settlement from an attack in defence of a girl, Mary Doremy, who spurned his suit, and later briefly joined the local Wolf Indian tribe. By 1774, the local Committee of Safety was imposing taxes on the Quaker farmers of Bucks County to support Boston after the closure of the Harbour by the government; this action was outrageous enough that it caused Moses Doan’s brothers to join him in harassing and robbing the collection agents who were extorting money from the Quakers there. The career of the Outlaw Doans had begun; as legend has it, they inaugurated it by raiding the Doremy family – Moses’ brothers were beating Mary Doremy’s father when Moses walked in on them, stopped them and promised his former crush that they wouldn’t bother her family again.

This band of outlaws quickly attained the status of folk heroes in Bucks County, though they were just as quickly vilified by the rebel colonists as demons and debauchers. They grew infamous for robbing wealthy Whig families and particularly for stealing horses and selling them to the British; Moses Doan also earned a reputation as General Howe’s ‘Eagle Spy’ for the detail and accuracy of the information he supplied. Moses Doan in particular seemed to have taken on a kind of knight-errant code: he beat one of his own gang senseless for trying to rape the wife of one of the men they were robbing, and later he would assist a young woman whose husband had taken up the rebel cause at Valley Forge in obtaining flour (ultimately, by gunning down one of the British sentries to clear a path for her back to her home). His gang also was responsible for freeing a number of British prisoners-of-war from the rebel stockade in Lancaster, to the point where a Major Lee at the stockade himself posed as one of his own prisoners in order to uncover the spy ring by which the Doans were freeing them. On another occasion, Joseph Doan audaciously impersonated Lord Rawdon (a popular and distinguished guest among wealthy Pennsylvania residents on both sides of the conflict), in order to relieve one of Lord Rawdon’s hosts of his money and silverware. On one raid near Elizabeth, New Jersey, however, Abraham Doan (a cousin of Moses Doan) shot the local minister’s wife to death in her home, with her nine children huddled around her – however chivalric Moses Doan may have been, his gang was generally prone to excesses of all sorts. Their most infamous exploit, however, was the heist of £1,307 (about $2,000,000 today) from the Newtown Treasury in Bucks County, supposedly in retaliation for the surrender of Cornwallis three days previous. They buried the money near Wrightstown, but it was never recovered.

After the war was over, the Doans were relentlessly pursued. The new government had confiscated all of their father’s property in retaliation for their actions, so they could not return home, nor could they count on Loyalist support for their actions. Moses Doan was tracked to a tavern, where he fought with one of his childhood rivals, a Colonel William Hart, before surrendering to the authorities. However, after having been arrested and disarmed, he was shot lying prone by one Captain Robert Gibson. The others of the Doan gang were either arrested and hanged (Levi and Abraham Doan) or disappeared (Mahlon Doan) or fled to Canada (Joseph Jr. and Aaron Doan).

It’s always interesting to uncover this sort of family history, particularly when they were engaged in causes one sympathises with. (My own direct branch of the family tended to be, by all appearances, fairly apolitical, with a live-and-let-live philosophy.) It also leads me to wonder, given that the Coopers were also located in Bucks County, what relationship they had with the infamous Doan Gang – were they robbed by them, or did they support them? It might be interesting to find out.