Levi (Doan) Doane (1756 - 1788)

Born 1756 in Plumstead Township, Bucks, Pennsylvania, British Colonial America

Ancestors

Died 24 Sep 1788 at about age 32 in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

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Levi Doane was a United Empire Loyalist.
UEL Status:Proven
Date: September 24, 1788 executed

Biography

A founding members of the Doan Outlaws. The Doane Outlaws were a notorious gang of brothers from a Quaker family most renowned for being British spies during the American Revolution.^[1]

THE DOAN GANG WERE THE scourge of Bucks County, Pennsylvania in the late 1700s

The Doan Gang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKOEfa_1P48

Comprised of five brothers—Moses, Joseph, Levi, Mahlon, and Aaron—and a cousin, Abraham, the Doans were from a Quaker family and were loyal to the King during the Revolutionary War. They were also renowned horse thieves. The Doans would steal horses from residents of Bucks County and sell them to the Redcoats in Philadelphia and Baltimore during the war. It was said they stole over 200 horses. Sometimes, they would steal horses just for the sport of it. They would take a neighbor’s horse and then return it, only to take it again just to show that they could.

The Revolution ended in 1781, but the Doan Gang’s crime sprees continued.

The Doans were tall, athletic, and reported to be good-looking. Once, Joseph Doan pretended to be a visiting dignitary, Lord Rawdon from England. He stayed with a prominent Philadelphia family and helped himself to their money and silverware during his stay. After he left he sent them a message inquiring how they enjoyed their visit with “Lord Rawdon.”

Aside from stealing horses, the gang also robbed the Newtown Treasury of 1,307 pounds. It was never found. Locals say that it may be hidden in one of several caves in Plumstead, Holicong, and Solebury that the gang used as hideouts from the law.

There is also a story that Moses Doan came very close to changing the course of the Revolutionary War. He was said to have noticed that George Washington’s troops had left their camp on Bowman’s Hill and were heading across the Delaware. He rode to Trenton and tried to pass a note to Colonel Rahl of the British Army. Unfortunately for the British, Colonel Rahl pocketed the note that told of Washington’s approach and never read it. And with that one of the greatest Colonial victories of the war was achieved.

Three of the six Doan members met tragic ends. Moses, the oldest of the group and its leader, was shot in an attack led by Colonel William Hart. The others managed to escape. Moses’ body was buried in a field in an unmarked grave in Fisherville. No one knows the exact location. Several years later, Abraham and Levi were captured and hung for their crimes. As Quakers, the Doan family wished to bury Levi and Abraham in the cemetery at the Plumstead Friends Meeting house, where local Quakers worshiped. The Quakers granted this request, but being pacifists they stipulated that the combative Doans could only be buried outside the cemetery walls.

To see the graves of Levi and Abraham—not the uninscribed originals, but later replacements that clearly label each of the cousins as “an outlaw”—enter the graveyard and go to the left side of the back wall. But lean over very slowly. Legend says never to sneak up on a Doan—dead or alive.

Levi Doane, a son of Joseph Doane and Hester Vickers, was born at Plumstead, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and was hanged at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 24, 1788. "His history was closely, identified with that of his cousin, Abraham Doane hence some of the facts in the career of both are here related. They were first cousins, nearly of the same age, and finally' ended their lives sit the same time, and under the same circumstances. Levi Doane's qame appears with that of his cousin Abraham and others in the Proclamation dated Saturday, July 26, 1783, and in which a reward of £100 specie is offered for the capture of each or any one of them. In June, 1784, Abraham Doane (231) and two or three of his accomplices were arrested and lodged in a jail in Washington Co., Pa., while on their way to Detroit. He probably escaped from that prison but finally, in 1788, was arrested with his cousin Levi in Chester Co., and conveyed to Philadelphia. They were in the Philadelphia jail in June, 1788, awaiting sentence of death under the outlawry. On the 7th of that month they petitioned Benjamin Franklin, President of the Executive Council, asking that the mercy of the laws of the country may be extended to them, and that the "outlawry so far as it relates to punishing us with death may be rescinded." They acknowledged they had aided the British and committed various offences, but plead their "youth and inexperience" and the "artful persuasion of designing men," in extenuation. In a subsequent petition dated July 14, 1788, they say they were induced by artful enemies of the Commonwealth to commit various crimes at an early age, neither of them being seventeen years old, but declare they were not " directly or indirectly concerned in the felony and burglary wherewith we are charged, and for which this process (outlawry) was had against us." The petitions of the unfortunate men themselves, not having met the success desired, the friends of the family in Bucks Co. interposed their influence to save their lives.

On the 13th of Aug., 1788, the mothers and sisters of the condemned men petitioned the council for pardon, but they say, if they cannot do this they desire that length of time be granted " to prepare for death and to complete, if possible, the important work of salvation." This petition bears the signatures of Hester Doane, mother of Levi; Rachel Doane, mother of Abraham; Rachel Doane, sister of Abraham, and Mary Doane, sister of Levi. This petition was supported by another, signed by over one hundred persons who ask that the lives of the two men " may be spared and the punishment of death remitted or altered to that of hard labor or banishment." To this petition are signed, among others, the names of Edward Fox, father of the late Judge Fox of Doylestown; Robert Morris the Financier of the Revolution and William White, first Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey. Two days afterward the mothers presented another petition accompanied by one from their two condemned sons asking for pardon, or an extension of time to prepare for death. Another and similar petition was presented the 9th of Aug. The 6th of Sept., Joseph Doane the father of Levi, and uncle of Abraham, petitions the council in behalf of his son and nephew, and asks that their lives be spared. These repeated applications must have made some impression on the Executive Council, for soon afterward a petition, numerously signed by inhabitants of Bucks Co., was presented to council asking that the law be allowed to take its course, and protesting against the pardon of the criminals. It was laid before the council and read on the 17th of Sept., 1788. All efforts to save Abraham and Levi Doane from death were unavailing and on Sept. 24, 1788, they were publicly hanged on the common in the city of Philadelphia. It is said that the father of Levi went to the city and carried the two bodies in a cart to Plumstead. The Society of Friends in that village, after deliberating awhile, refused to grant permission for the interment in their graveyard, consequently they were buried in the edge of the woods nearly opposite the Plumstead Meeting-house.

An old lady, who once lived on the Doane farm, remembers that Levi's mother was in the habit of visiting his grave, over which with Bible in hand she would read and weep for hours at a time.

When Abraham and Levi were hanged in Philadelphia, it was commonly said of them, with special reference to Abraham, " they have hanged the smartest two men in Pennsylvania."^[2]

Sources

• https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/doan-gang-tombstones#:~:text=The%20Doan%20gang%20were%20the,were%20also%20renowned%20horse%20thieves.
• https://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/story/lifestyle/columns/2018/07/30/outlaws-reconsidered/11201481007/

1. ↑ Wikipedia: Doan Outlaws
2. ↑ Doane, Alfred Alder, The Doane Family and Their Descendants (A. A. Doane, Boston Mass., 1902) pgs. 241-242.