Young Shaw, however, soon raised a number of the inhabitants, part of whom responded to his father’s call for assistance, and part of whom armed themselves and went in pursuit of the robbers.
When the Doans finished with Mr. Shaw, they proceeded to the house of Joseph Grier, and robbed him, and then went to a tavern kept by Colonel Robert Robinson, a very corpulent man, whom they dragged out of bed, bound him in a most excruciating position, and placed him naked in the midst of them; then they whipped him until their ferocity was satisfied.
They robbed and abused several other persons the same night, and then fled into Montgomery County. Here they were overtaken, somewhere on Skippack, and so hotly pursued that they were glad to abandon the five horses on which they rode, and seek safer refuge in the thicket. Joseph was shot through the cheeks, and captured when he fell from his horse. The others escaped.
The prisoner was confined in jail at Newtown, then the county town of Bucks, but while awaiting trial effected his escape. He fled into New Jersey, where he taught school, under an assumed name, for nearly a year.
The Federal Government offered a reward of $800 for him or his brothers, dead or alive. While Joseph was in a saloon one evening a man was heard to say that he would shoot any one of the Doans on sight for the sake of the reward. Joseph took the hint and made his way into Canada.
Moses, the captain of the gang, with two of his brothers, had taken refuge in a cabin occupied by a drunken man, near the mouth of Tohickon Creek. Mr. Shaw learned of the place of their concealment, rallied a party with Colonel Hart as leader, and surrounded them.
Instead of shooting them down at once, Colonel Hart opened the door, and cried out, “Ah! You’re here, are you?”
The Doans seized their guns and shot down Mr. Kennedy, one of the party. Two of the outlaws crawled through a window unseen, and escaped in the woods. Moses, the most respectable of all the brothers, surrendered. Immediately after he gave himself up he was shot down by one of the attacking party. It was discovered that the man who killed Moses was a former member of his outlaw band and killed him to close his mouth forever.
Two others of the Doan brothers, Abraham and Levi, were later captured in Chester County, and afterward hanged on September 24, 1788, in Philadelphia. Their bodies were taken back to Plumstead Township for burial.
Their valor and generosity made them respected above ordinary robbers, and many temperate people in the county expressed or felt great commiseration for them.