Over and Doane

In the year and a half I've been blogging on Bucks County History, I've mostly abstained from writing about the Doan Gang. I'm wildly curious about them, but, as it sometimes happens — especially with interesting historical stuff — there's just so much information about them that it's difficult to sift through and separate fact from fiction.

You hear all sorts of things about the Doans (or Doanes — see? Even the spelling is hard to pin down). That they had a secret lair, in a cave, on the banks of the Tohickon Creek. That they almost stopped Washington from crossing the Delaware, and robbed the County treasury at Newtown. That the tavern keeper's wife walloped one of them with a fireplace poker in Pipersville. That Moses Doan rode his horse off the cliffs above Fleecydale Road outside Carversville, romantically choosing death over defeat.

I want to believe all of it. Fiction is often much more alluring than fact. But I don't want folklore; I want proof. And I'm not sure where to find it.

The Spruance Library probably has some good primary source documents, but, to tell the truth, I'm a little intimidated. I'm sure they've already been pored over by historians much wiser and more savvy than myself; picked apart and extrapolated and spun into dry, dense publications.

So yeah. I'm a romantic, but a realist. I don't like to deceive myself, so I end up peering suspiciously at things until it all feels like myth. And that fuels the curiosity even more. What would you call that? Irony? A Catch-22? A vicious cycle?

Only time will tell.