New Britain Borough’s Historic Preservation Committee will be hosting local author, Carl LaVO, to speak about the thrilling history surrounding Bucks County’s own “Doan Gang.” Please join us @ 7:00 PM on April 8, 2019 at Lenape Valley Presbyterian Church located at 321 W Butler Avenue. This event is free of charge.
For seating purposes, registration for this event is required for admission. Please register using the form at the bottom of this page or by calling the New Britain Borough administration office at (215) 348-4586.
Guest speaker, Carl LaVO, a retired news editor and author of five books, is a weekly local history columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times and The Intelligencer newspapers and author of his newest book, Bucks County Adventures. His books will be available for purchase and signing at the event.
About The Doan Gang
The Doan Gang outlaws, also known as the “Doan Boys” and “Plumstead Cowboys,” were a notorious gang of brothers from a Quaker family most renowned for being British spies during the American Revolutionary War.
The Doans were Loyalists from a Quaker family of good standing. The “Doan Boys” reached manhood at the time of the American Revolutionary War. Growing up in Plumstead, Pennsylvania, the Doans excelled athletically. The Doan gang’s principal occupation was robbing Whig tax collectors, and horse theft. The gang stole over 200 horses from their neighbors in Bucks County that they sold to the Red Coats in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
The Friends Meeting House’s cemetery in Plumsteadville is protected by a field-stone wall that runs around its perimeter. Levi and Abraham Doan were buried just outside this wall because the pacifist Quakers refused to bury militants within their graveyard (a veteran of the Civil War is likewise buried outside the graveyard perimeter). The graves are adorned with their original native brownstone headstones which bear no inscriptions, following the Quaker practice at the time of their death, as well as newer headstones that identify them as outlaws.
(Resource, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doan_Outlaws)
