The History of one of the Pioneers
of Colonial America and some of his Descendents.
After a brief stay in the West, Robert Doak went back to Northampton County and enlisted on January 6, 1776, in Captain Hay's Company from that County This Company associated with others under the command of Colonel Siegfried (and) became a part of Col. Trespaugh's Battalion of Pennsylvania troops. The company originally consisted of 28 officers and men. The Pennsylvania troops were called into the Continental Service on June 13, 1776.
A very interesting part of the published records of the state in connection with the first years service of their company is the statement that on Christmas Day 1776, each man in Captain Hay's Company received as pay for his services one-half bushel of salt, which was sent to his home in Northampton County for him. The name of Robet Doak is in the record as having received his salt. As he was not married at that time perhaps his salt was sent to his former boarding place.
He served his country as a soldier from January 6, 1776 to March 8, 1783, a total of 7 years, 2 months and 2 days.
(Among others) [Robert] was in the two battles on Pennsylvania soil: Germantown and Brandywine and at the camp at Valley Forge, near Philadelphia, where they suffered the snows of winter without proper food, or clothing and shoes to keep them from suffering from the cold.
I remember my Grandfather [Moses] tell of his father [Robert], who went through those experiences, saying that at the battle of the Brandywine the river ran red with the blood of the slain. We can believe that when we remember that the Brandwine was not such a river as the Deleware or the Ohio, but one that could be waded at low water seasons.
In the general roll of Revolutionary forces dated May 14, 1778, this Company is enrolled as the 6th Company of the 4th Battalion, with Captain John Ralston in command. Robert, Moses and James Doak (brothers) are on the roll of the Company which consisted at this time of 83 men, James Doak being Quartermaster. The same Company still later was made the 5th Company of the 3rd Battalion, Adam Clendeming was the last Captain of the Company, and under him it was mustered out. In his final report he says: "I do certify that this wase the True State of my Company at the Time I delivered it in, as witness my hand this 8th day of March 1783" This was about 1 year and three months after Cornwallis had surrendered to General Washington at Yorktown on October 18, 1781. But the treaty of peace was not signed until September 3, 1783.
Robert drilled with General Wayne at Legionville, now Sewicke, and went against the French and Indians and defeated them in the "Battle of Fallen Timbers" at the falls of the Mouse(sp) River, 12 Miles South-West of Toledo Ohio.
He went back to his farm in Beaver County. As a matter of fact it was not Beaver County. It was not certain whether it was even in Pennsylvania. Virginia claimed it. A survey made later proved it to be in Pitt Township, Bedford County, Pennsylvania. In 1773, when Westmoreland County was formed, it became Pitt Township in that County. Then in 1781, Washington County was formed and it became Smith Township in that County. In 1786 Hanover Township was formed from the northern end of the County. Finally Beaver County was organized in 1800 and the Township was divided. The Southern end being Hanover Township, Washington County and the northern end being Hanover Township, Beaver County, and it has remained so ever since.
That did not make any difference to Robert Doak, as it could not affect his title in any way. Colonel Ralston, his last commander before his discharge, had persuaded him to buy a Negro slave to help him clear his land. He gave the Colonel 160 acres of his land for him.
But the state of Pennsylvania in the meantime had freed the slaves. So [the slave] was gone and so was the land. He need not have lost the land, as the Colonel knowing the fact, never laid claim to the land and it was later sold for the taxes. Later it came into the hands of Jeptha Lockhardt, my mother's father.
Robert Doak found that a squatter had settled on his land and built himself a log cabin. To avoid any trouble he gave the man a small sum for his claim and proceeded to get a proper title to his land. Bausman in his history of the County gives the date of Levi Dungan's title as September 1, 1789. The patent of Robert Doak was given on February 28, 1785
After returning from his long service for his country he married Miss Sarah McKibben. After building a log cabin home and other necessary buildings, they reared a large family of ten children and lived to a good old age. In spite of all the hardship and stress of five years of Army life with Washington, and with scant food and clothing and little pay, and the two years with General Anthony Wayne and then the hard work of clearing out a farm for himself in the hardwood forest, Robert Doak lived to the age of 88 years, and his wife to the age of 73. He was born in 1750 and died October 4, 1838. She was born in 1765 and died June 18, 1838. Their six sons were Robert, John, William, James, Moses and Thomas. Their four daughters Betsy, Margaret, Nancy and Mary. Located in the great woods that covered Western Pennsylvania after making a home for himself, the next things to be provided for were church and school.
As to the school, all that I have been able to find is from a copy of the "Commonplace Book" of Rev. John Taylor, who after stopping for a while in Harrisburg, had come into this first settlement in Beaver County and early in 1797 secured a vacant building and opened a school for children on May 2, 1797, which was without a doubt the first school ever conducted in the County. It was in Hannover Township.
More settlers had come in by this time, and the list of subscribers to that school as given by Rev. John Taylor, who conducted, it were Robert Doak, William Langfitt, Samuel Swearingen, James Whitehill, Robert Kennedy, David Kerr, James Reed, Thomas Swearingen, Captain David Patton, James Ferrell, and Obadiah Applegate. All these men lived in the neighborhood of King's Creek, Mill Creek or Indian Creek, all in Hanover Township, Beaver County. My grandfather, Moses, attended this school for three months. I suppose that was the length of time it was continued. I have heard him say that was all the schooling he ever got, three months!
Another interesting item in this "Commonplace Book" was in May of 1798 a gallon of whisky received from James Whitehill under which is written the word "Wedding." Robert Doak's son James, a brother of my grandfather Moses, married Martha Whitehill. This whiskey was very likely for that wedding. Such was the custom in those days. Rev. Taylor evidently preached in this building as well as conducting the school, as he says, "There was little prospect of increasing the number of subscribers by proselytizing, whereas Presbyterian sentiment was so strong, or of obtaining additional scholars for the school." So when an invitation came from Pittsburgh, he left Beaver County for the larger field. This was sometime between the summer of 1799 and June 1, 1800, probably in the early spring of 1800 as he began teaching school in Pittsburgh on June 1, 1800.
Before Rev. Taylor went to Pittsburgh, Robert Doak looked for a Presbyterian Church. There was one at Upper Buffalo in Washington County on the main road from Wellsburg through the village of Independence to Washington, PA. This church s founded in 1779 at Buffalo Village, which grew up around the church, and Vance's Fort near at hand. The church grew out of a revival held under an Oak tree just outside the Fort. Rev. James Powers was the preacher. Services wee also held at Cross Creek, and the two churches were connected with Rev. Joseph Smith as the first pastor. His salary was 75 Pounds English money per year. He was pastor until April 1792 [13 years]. Rev. Thomas Maruuis, who continued to serve both congregations until 1798, followed him. He as pastor when Robert Doak attended this church. [Details of clergy serving this church follow in AMD's diary] Robert Doak had about 30 miles to travel to reach this church. I have heard my grandfather say that his father would start on Saturday and ride this 30 miles to church carrying his rifle slung across his saddle in from of him to guard against wild beasts or any Indians who might be prowling about the woods. After the Sunday services, he would return home on Monday. I am sorry I never asked grandfather how often his father went to church. I think likely he would spend some periods of especially bad weather at home with his family. [skip] Of course, he was much interested in getting a church nearer home.
On April 20, 1785, Mill Creek [Church] located about five miles north from Robert Doak's home having been organized in 1784, asked for a supply. It was Robert Doak who was chosen to drive over the mountains and across the Delaware River some forth-five miles beyond Philadelphia to bring back Rev. Scott, a professor in that now famous school Princeton, to be the first pastor of Mill Creek Presbyterian Church.
He started from home on or near May 27 and arrived at Princeton on June 17. On July 1st they left Princeton and arrived at Mill Creek on July 20, 1799. The professor said he wanted some experience in the wilderness as he called it. And it was pretty much of a wilderness at that time. If one had the good hardwood timber that the men of the Mill Creek Church cut down and burned to get it out of the way of farming work, he would be rich. It took Robert Doak three weeks and three or four days in mid-summer to take this long trip of between eight and nine hundred miles in his Conestoga wagon to bring Reverend Scott to his church. As pay for his services the men of the congregation put up his harvest for him. I have a penholder that I very much prize, made out of wood from the bed of that old Conestoga wagon. I am writing now with that penholder. Reverend Scott and Robert Doak and his wife Sarah and their daughter Mary lie buried in the old graveyard of the Mill Creek Church, of which Robert was one of the founders.
Of Robert's six sons and four daughters, Robert married Jane Wilcoxon, John married Mary Anderson, William married Sarah Dobbins, James married Martha Whitehill, Moses married Rachel Stephens, Thomas married Mary Laughlin, Betsy married Samuel Moore, Margaret married John Ramsey, Nancy married John McKibben and Mary died unmarried at the age of 26. Of these I remember only my grandfather and "Aunt Betsy" Moore.
As to Robert's other sons, John went to Washington County in Pennsylvania, I knew one of his sons Thomas, and a married daughter who lived in Claysville in that County which was my first charge after I was admitted to the Pittsburgh Conference. Thomas went to Newton, Iowa, where some of his family still are living. Moses, my grandfather, lived all his life on his part of the old farm. I knew as a boy Robert, William and Joseph Whitehill, cousins of my father and also some of the Ramseys who were also relatives of my mother. Three of her sisters married men of these families. We visited back and forth with these families when I was a boy. Dave Whitehill, a son of Robert[?], was one of my best friends in the years before I left home.
Moses Doak, my grandfather, married Rachel Stephens on May 18, 1815. They had seven sons and three daughters. The sons were Issac, Robert, Samuel, Wiliam, James, David and Thomas. The daughters [were] Rachel, Sarah and Polly.
Moses lived an uneventful life on the farm with the exception of two trips he took during his active life. The first one was to the Western part of Ohio near Lima to bring back one of his sisters and her family who suffered so much from Malaria due to the germ carrying mosquitos from the flat undrained land, that they could not stay longer. He said he Drove for days when he could not see the tongue of his wagon unless a wheel struck a stump or a rock and threw it out of the water. The people were just abandoning their land and getting away. He could have bought all he wanted for $1.25 an acre. If he had bought a few hundred acres at that price he would have been a rich man. It later was a great oil field.
His other trip was in the opposite direction. Just after the battle of Gettysburgh when word came that his son William had been badly wounded and was in a Philadelphia hospital with uncertainty as to the outcome, he hastened in that direction and carried messages for other soldiers from the home neighborhood. Some had been wounded and others killed. When he came back the all the information he could get, they presented him with a find cane, which after his death came into my possession. I gave it later to my son Henry who appreciates such things. Moses was born on September 17, 1797 and died May 25, 1880. Rachael was born on June 5, 1798 and died October 11, 1871.
Aunt Sarah lived for several years after the death of her father and died in the home of a niece, Mrs Hervey Stephenson, not far from the old house.
Grandfather was unjust to my Father and Aunt Sarah who stayed at home and took care of him and grandmother until they died, and that to their own disadvantage as he did not make a will as she should have done giving them the house and farm.
William Doak, my father, was born on March 28, 1930 and lived all his life on the 80 acre farm which his father inherited from the 400 acres owned by his grandfather Robert.
He stayed at home and worked for his father and his sister kept house for them while the other older brothers married and went to themselves until on President Lincoln's second call for volunteers to sve the country from being divided or overthrown in the war over slavery from 1861-1865. He enlisted in the Northern Army.
He told me one incident of his boyohood, as he related it to me one day. On one occasion when he was running along the parth between his house and that of his grandfather Robert's he caught up with the old man, who whirled around an came near hitting him with his cane thinking it was a cross buck. However he saw his mistake before he struck
As he grew to manhood his older brothers all married and went elsewhere and did not do anything for their father and mother. Rachael married. This left father and Aunt Sarah to stay at home and take care of the old folks.
When Lincoln's second call for more troops to save the nation from being divided, and possibly destroyed, over the slavery question, my father enlisted in Company F, 140th Regiment, being recruited in Beaver, Washington and Mercer Counties. His Company was taken into the service August 21, 1862, on the public square in front of the courthouse in Beaver where the monument now stands, by Captain Thomas H. Norton of the Regular Army
A little later they took the train at Rochester where a crowd of relatives and friends had gathered to bid them good-bye. On the evening of September 4th they left Pittsburgh with other companies and the next day arrived at Camp Curtin near Harrisburg. The Officers chosen there were Colonel Richard P. Roberts of Beaver, a prominent lawyer, Captain Thomas Henry, William S. Shallenberger of Company F Adjutant who after the war represented our district in Congress for several terms. After spending four months at Camp Curtain, and having received uniforms, arms, ammunition and other necessary equipment, marching orders were received on the 9th of September and they marched to the North Centeral R.R. station.
The train did not come until the next morning about 4 o'clock. They boarded the train at once and headed for Baltimore. As they went through Wilmington, Delaware, they were given an enthusiastic welcome, as the citizens were loyal. Later they were jeered at and hooted by rebel sympathizers in Baltimore. In the afternoon at 2 o'clock the arrived at Parkton Station in Marylnand where they pitched their tents and for three months drilled and guarded the RailRoad in a section assigned to them. Here they stayed until the 10th of December. Here they had one of the worst experiences of the war. During the three months of this guard duty there were many days and nights of cold rain and snow and they were sent out for 24 hours at a time where some would be on guard [and] others would sleep. I have heard my father tell many a time of lying on the ground wrapped in his blacket to get some sleep in the cold rains, and waking up to the the cold water in a pool above him about to run over, and his clothes frozen so stiff that they would have stood alone if he could have gotten out of them. It is a wonder any of them lived to tell the story. There were many cases of serious illness the result of this treatment.
On the 10th of December the North Center R.R., which they had been guarding took them to the terminal in Baltimore, a distance of 29 miles in rough freight cars. The 140th and 148th regiments marched through the city at a late hour of the night with bands playing and flags waving ot the station on the Washington side of the city, a distance of nearly two miles.
Along the line of march they were welcomed by crowds of enthusiastic students who waved flags from windows, doors, and balconies, or came out to the curb to call "God bless you boys! The Union Forever." The soldiers sang the national anthems. They were comfortably quartered in the Union Association Hall for the night, and given an excellent midnight supper. After seeing Baltimore the next day, they took the train in the evening for Washington. They were crowded into boxcars with no air and after a sleepless journey of ten hours they arrived in the suburbs of the city, where they were quartered until afternoon of the next day awaiting orders.
On the 13th of December they left Washington City for Liverpool Point about 60 miles distant. Before leaving they had received their shelter tents which were their only covering until the end of the war.
The also received blankets, overcoats, knapsacks, haversacks, shelter tents, three days rations, cartridge boxes with 40 rounds of ammunition, heavy Belgian Muskets with saber bayonet. These things averaged 65 or 70 lbs per man. The chill wind that blew up the river came into the tents at every opening and two the nights which they spent on the march were so bitterly cold that the water in their canteens froze solid.
At Liverpool Point they rested for a few hours and a government tranport carried the regiment down the broad Patomac, whihc here was about four miles wide, to the Viginia side at the mouth of Aqua Creek.
Here they hear for the first time of the crushing defeat of Burnside at Fredericksburg.
The Railroad from Aqua Creek to Falmouth was crowded with wounded men who were being sent from the field hospitals to Baltimore and Washington City.
The new troops were marched over muddy roads to Falmouth where a site for a camp had been selected within sight of and almost directly opposite the city of Fredrickburg.
An order had already been issued assigning the 140th regiment ot the First Division of General Couch's Corps, then commanded by General Winfield Scott Hancock. The Brigade was assigned to General S.K. Zook. General Hooker in Chief Command planned a great turning movement. His well trained army of 130,000 men was the largest and best equipped military force which had ever been called in the service on this coninent. On April 21st a feint was made of crossing the river at Port Royal, 20 miles below Fredericksburg. The real movement, too long delayed, began on the 27th. On the night of the 28th and morning of the 29th they crossed and began the march down the right bank. The Rapidan waws crossed with scarcely any opposition, and pushed on toward the Chancelorsville House.
To cooperate with it, the first and third divisions of the Second Corps were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to cross at United States ford. At three o'clock in the morning, after the reading of a verse of scripture and a prayer by the leader, the bugle call to fall in was sounded and they were off.
On Thursday and Thursday night they crossed and arrived near midnight and rested at a point about a mile from Chancellorsville.
With everything favoring a victory, Hooker, in a drunken and dazed condition, gave orders which led to a defeat when otherwise a victory would have been certain. In the midst of the fighting Hancock ordered an officer of the 140th to detail enough of his men to carry the wounded men out of hte Chancelorsville House, which had been set on fire by rebel shells nad was burning.
William Doak was one of the men named. The instant they stepped out two of them were killed and four others wounded. The men killed were James Carson and Joseph Baker. Captain Henry mentions the fact that he came out of the house which a woman on each arm, and another holding on to his coattail. They were the women belonging in the house, besides the doctors and the wounded men who had been taken in to be cared for. As they carried one of the men out a shell exploded overhead and killed him.
In this battle of Chancellorsville, the second Corps lost 1923 men killed, wounded and missing and Hancock's division 1123. The battle lasted three days, May 2nd, 3rd and 4th. The men engaged by Hooker, 132,000 by Lee 65,000. Hooker listed 16,030 and Lee 12, 281, including Stonewall Jackson, one of the South's best generals, killed by his own men through a mistake.
During the fighting Samuel McBride of the 140th was struck by a minnieball in the center of his forehead and fell to the ground as one dead. After a few moments he arose and with a dazed look staggered back into line. Supposing he was trying to escape from his post of duty the Captain halted him with a drawn revolver, but when he saw the bullet sticking fast in his forehead his attitude quickly changed. The ball had penetrated the outer bones without making a fatal wound. After this narrow escape from death he was given an honorable discharge, and lived to preach the gospel in Western Pennsylvania for 45 years.
The defeated army retreated to the river unmolested by Lee and by Wednesday afternoon were all safely over and back at their old camp. Several of the leading officers had favored this retreat because they had lost confidence in the judgment of the general in command. But the Army of the Potomac had been humiliated for the first and the last time. After Chancellorsville General Hancock was given command of the Second Corps.
It was soon learned that Lee was heading for Pennsylvania. The Union Army kept between him and Washington, and started on the forced march of over 200 miles to head him off from reaching and burning the capitol of that great and loyal state, as he was evidently intending to do.
On the way they passed over the battlefield of Bull Run, where the bodies of the slain had been hastily buried and because of rains, arms, hands, feet and skulls were more or less exposed. Belts and parts of gray and blue clothing and broken equipment made a gruesome sight which was anything but cheerful. From morning until far into the night there were almost continuous showers of rain. Much of the way was up grade and the red Virginia clay seriously interfered with their progress. At one of the halting places of General Braddock 108 year before, on his way to Fort Duquesne, Green Springs, they halted for the night. On the 29th of June the Second Corps made the most memorable march of this wearisome journey northward. They traveled 32 miles through a sultry day and part of the night, over dusty roads, without passing long enough to make coffee or cook a meal, and with blistered feet and heavy burdens. The only drink they could take was the warm insipid and often muddy water in their canteens and the only food, a mouthful of hard-tack now and them. Some of the men suffered so much from blistered feet that they had to be carried a part of the way in ambulances. The men who did not have a limp in their gait were the rare exception. Many of the Maryland people were in sympathy with the South, and did not give any help. As they passed through Uniontown Maryland refreshments and kind words welcomed them. While in camp near Uniontown, awaiting developments, they were notified that General George G. Mead was to take the place of Hooker, which was received with favor. On the first of July, starting from the camp, they took the road to Tareytown, and at intervals had heard the boom of artillery during the morning and soon a messenger came saying a great battle was in progress with Lee's Army at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. They encamped near the Pennsylvania line where General Meade succeeded hooker as Commander in Chief of the Army.
On the first of July they started for Gettysburg, and pushing on through the darkness, with brief pauses for rest until near two o'clock in the morning of July 2nd they were about two miles from Gettysburg, when they rested until daybreak.
It had been a terrible march on the hottest day of an unusually hot summer and amid clouds of dust. Hundreds of strong men fell by the way, and the surgeons reported the death of 15 men from fatigue or sun stoke. The men suffered from excessive thirst. Sometimes there was not a drop of water in sight for miles, and often the only supply was in muddy streams or stagnant pools along whose borders dead horses or mules were lying. They rested near the battlefield in a wheat field for two hours. They were aroused from sleep and without waiting to make fires were ordered to fall in. Arriving on the field of battle (this was the 2nd of July) the Brigade under General Zook advanced beyond the wheat field and entered a rocky woodland amid the dead and wounded and through a dense pall of smoke out into the open edge of the woods. With ringing cheers they came into close quarters with the enemy. The three companies on the right of the regiment C.F and G met the heaviest loss.
Colonel Roberts was mortally wounded, David Acheson ranking Captain was killed almost at his side. Company F left the field with only 11 men out of 49 taken into battle. The regiment lost half its men in half an hour.
It went in with 25 officers and 490 men and in less than 2 hours had 14 officers and 277 men.
William Doak was shot twice within a few minutes. Two mine balls passed though the fleshy part of the same leg below the knee. He knew he could not go on and lest he should get another bullet that might kill him, he sat down on the side of a large Oak tree on the side away from which the battle was raging. Lest he should bleed to death he tore up his blouse and drew the strips through his wounds to stop the bleeding as much as possible.
After the battle had raged back and forth and until the next day when the Army of Lee had been hurled back in the final defeat, he lay there on the field without help for three days. Finally the wounded were gathered up and sent to hospitals. He was sent to one in Philadelphia where it was through he could not live as gangrene, a rapidly spreading mortification of the flesh surrounding the would, had set in. However they got it stopped and he recovered. It had made a great hole in the side of his leg and the nerves and muscles were so affected that he suffered with cramps, which often kept him awake at night, for the rest of his life. Yet for nearly all the rest of his life go got only $4 per month pension. After he got able to get around they put him into the hospital to nurse for the remainder of his 3 year period of enlistment.
During this period he was transferred from the 140th Regiment to 2 Battalion, 170th Company Veterans Reserve Corps and was given an Honorable Discharge on the 24th day of July 1865.
Returning to the farm in Beaver County, he was married to Miss Margaret Jane Lockhart to whom he had been engaged before the war. They were married on October 19th, 1865. Their children were five in number.
Alson M and Nancie B, twins born on April 18, 1967. Laura B., born May 2, 1869, Fred Stephens born Tuesday, August 8, 1871, Emma Myrtle born March 1st, 1873 who married Vick Nickle.
Father and Mother lived on the old farm and took care of Grandfather and Aunt Sarah. They had part of the house and we had ours until grandfather dies in 1880.
Then after some experiences, which were not to the credit of his older brother, he came into the possession of the old farm. After much hard work he and mother reared their family, lived honest and honorable lives and both lived to a good old age. They did all they could to give us the best in things of the body and in intellectual and spiritual life. Father had a good enough education to help me get a good start in arithmetic and mother early taught us of the love of God and our duties toward him. Nobody ever had a better mother than we had.
In spite of all his exposure and suffering during the war and his hard work afterward father died at the age of 84 and mother at the age of 87.
William Doak born Sunday, March 28, 1830. Died Tuesday, April 23, 1912.
Margaret Jane Doak born Saturday, November 7, 1835. Died Monday, October 30, 1922.
Born in
Born in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1912...
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Chapter VII Patrick Brian Doak
Born in Van Nuys, California, in 1967....
Chapter VIII Clarissa LaRae Doak
Born in Salem, Oregon, in
Born in Salem, Oregon, in