The sons of family patriarch Joseph Doan reached manhood at the time of the American Revolutionary War.

Bucks County, an area sympathetic to the Doan outlaws with a large Loyalist population, grew out of William Penn's "holy experiment", and was guided more by Quaker "inner light" than by the traditional "rights of Englishmen".

In nearby Philadelphia, the elite Proper Philadelphians were rich, charming, and tolerant, but had relinquished the role of governing the city.

Bucks County boasted rich farmland, large supplies of fresh water, timber, iron, fire clay, game, and their famous fieldstone for building.

Around this time he joined a small band of local Indians of the Wolf clan of the Lenni Lenape tribe.

A handwritten note by Etta Holloway, great-granddaughter of Joseph Doan, tells the story of the outlaws this way: They were all of the Quaker faith and did not believe in war.

On December 25, 1776, Moses may have delivered this note to Colonel Johann Rahl's headquarters: "Washington is coming on you down the river, he will be here afore long.

However, a 1788 broadside about Abraham and Levi Doan did state that a victim (a French gentleman who owned a store on the Susquehanna) died of wounds incurred from the gang.

On October 22, 1781, three days after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, the Doan gang robbed the Bucks County Treasury in Newtown of 1,307 pounds sterling, equal to £206,506 today.

One posse member, Major Kennedy, was struck in the back by a bullet from a Doan gun, and died from the injuries three days later.

Moses Doan's gravestone was moved by a farmer and currently lies in a hedgerow in Plumstead Township, badly weathered by the elements.

[citation needed] The Friends Meeting House's cemetery in Plumsteadville is protected by a fieldstone wall that runs around its perimeter.

[clarification needed] In the centuries following the Revolutionary War, a substantial mythology has accumulated regarding the Doans and their actions, especially locally in the parts of Pennsylvania they once inhabited.

Loyalists wrote of the Doan gang sympathetically, as if their crimes were justified because they undermined the oppressors in favor of the oppressed, akin to Robin Hood.

[18] On July 3, 2024, Expedition Unknown aired an episode entitled "Traitors' Treasure of 1776" about money the Doan gang stole during the American Revolution.