John Dooly

Behind the Story

Dooly's story, however, would not remain in that part of Patriot lore described by historian Hugh Bicheno as "propaganda not merely triumphing over historical substance, but virtually obliterating it."(n3) Research on the Revolution since Ashmore's time has evolved from only the major military events of that war to the world in which it occurred. Dooly's life, for example, illustrates how he and his neighbors in the ceded lands had been moving for greater control of their frontier world. This struggle occurred before, during, and after the Revolution. He emerges, in that context, as a man of motives and actions more complex than McCall's simplistic although basically accurate account.(n4)

Father and son

John Dooly's role in those events began with his father Patrick. Everything known about Patrick Dooly's life parallels that of the archetypical traditional and historical southern Scots-Irish frontiersman, as portrayed in works like David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America.(n5) Likely a native Irishman, he appeared in frontier Frederick County, Virginia, land records as early as 1755. As with many other Virginians, Patrick moved to the South Carolina frontier sometime between August 2, 1764, and July 2, 1765, according to land grant records, likely in search of unclaimed property to develop for sale to later settlers and for security from conflicts with the natives. His subsequent deed records indicate that he had a wife named Anne and that he could at least sign his name.(n6) A few years later, an adult John Dooly traveled hundreds of miles from the Ninety Six frontier to Charleston, the seat of the only local government body in South Carolina, to go through the legal formalities to settle his father's insignificant estate. The probate records prove that both Patrick and Anne had died by December 6, 1768, because on that date John received all of his father's property as the nearest male relative under the then-current laws of primogeniture. The inventory showed a household that possessed a slave woman, a female slave child, books, household goods, and the remains of a small wheelwright or blacksmith operation. John sold off the estate's only other asset: his father's last tracts of land.(n7)

Growing family

Patrick and John Dooly would share land development in common but, as proved more typical with later leaders of the Revolution than its opponents, father and son followed significantly different lives.(n8) By means unknown, John acquired an education and, on February 3, 1768, secured a commission as deputy surveyor. The province of South Carolina employed him in 1771, quite likely as a participant in the expedition to help the colony's surveyor Ephraim Mitchell locate and mark the boundary with North Carolina. Within a few years, Dooly became a merchant and a land developer far beyond anything his father had achieved.(n9) John married Dianna Mitchell, quite likely related to the many Mitchells who were South Carolina surveyors, including cartographer John Mitchell and the deputy surveyor Thomas Mitchell. The latter also became the first husband of Dooly's sister Elizabeth. John and Dianna Dooly had a growing family by 1773, eventually numbering at least two sons, John Mitchell and Thomas, and a daughter Susannah. By that time, John had made his brothers Thomas and George his protégés, with Thomas even becoming a deputy surveyor.(n10)

General accounts of the lives of such backcountry people as the Doolys survive but suffer from being highly prejudiced. Englishman Charles Woodmason, for example, described the people of this frontier as living little different from their livestock. In 1774, Scotsman William Mylne wrote less passionately. He lived alone in the woods on a rented farm on Steven's Creek, South Carolina, near Dooly-owned land but also close to Augusta. Mylne's house consisted of a sixteen by twenty foot enclosure made from stacked pine logs and covered with a clapboard roof. When not keeping snakes and the resident cat from eating his chickens, he subsisted by hunting and fishing. His stout and well-made male neighbors lived like natives; they followed their livestock while their women stayed home to plant a wide variety of grains, vegetables, and fruits. Mylne wrote of how the colorfully dressed and largely Baptist backcountry people raised tobacco that they took to distant cities like Charleston and Savannah to sell. That product would travel to Europe and then return for purchase by the original growers as snuff. Frontier people could barter for goods from local merchants like John Dooly, but they found the prices in such stores to be too high.(n11)

Biblical prophesy

This opening of the Ceded Lands came during, and became part of, a transitional period in local government on the Georgia frontier that, like the Regulator rebellion, predated the American Revolution. At that time, naturalist William Bartram passed through this area twice and would write a description that reads like a biblical prophecy of its coming troubles: The day's progress was agreeably entertaining, from the novelty and variety of objects and views; the wild country now almost depopulated, vast forests, expansive plains and detached groves; then chains of hills whose gravelly, dry, barren summits present detached piles of rocks, which delude and flatter the hopes and expectations of the solitary traveller, full sure of hospitable habitations; heaps of white, gnawed bones of the ancient buffaloe, elk and deer, indiscriminately mixed with those of men, half grown over with moss, altogether exhibit scenes of uncultivated nature, on reflection, perhaps, rather disagreeable to a mind of delicate feelings and sensibility, since some of these objects recognize past transactions and events, perhaps not altogether reconcilable to justice and humanity.(n19)

In 1768, Gov. James Wright avoided the troubles of the South Carolina frontier by siding with his backcountry people in their successful political campaign to have the colonial assembly establish courts at Augusta and Halifax. Georgia's backcountry also had, for several years, sent representatives to the colonial assembly, such as Leonard Claiborne and Edward Barnard, prominent men who lived on the frontier and had their fortunes tied to its future. When raiding parties of disaffected Creeks protested the loss of the Ceded Lands by attacking its settlements and defeating the St. Paul's Parish militia in 1773-1774, Wright used diplomacy with pro-British leader Emistisiguo to end the crisis. This Creek headman bluntly complained of how agent John Stuart, Governor Wright, and other British leaders used him to act against the best interests of his people. But he had also risen to power from humble beginnings due to British support; Wright had even commissioned him as commander and head warrior of the Creeks in September 1768. The Creek headman reciprocated by literally giving the king's officials a lifetime commitment, even to the extent of arranging for the assassinations of the leaders of the raids on the Ceded Lands settlements.(n20)

Against the Native Americans

Sixty of his neighbors under Jacob Colson headed for South Carolina to help in putting down a counter revolution by the king's supporters. In response to Cherokee raids of that summer of 1776, Dooly and his company, as part of an expedition under Maj. Samuel Jack, destroyed two villages. Virginia and both of the Carolinas contributed thousands more men in simultaneous campaigns that wrecked Cherokee. Jack's force, however, demonstrated that even Georgia, with its comparatively small population, could provide something toward a united Whig effort of the southern frontier.(n26) The majority of southern frontiersmen now supported the rebellion, as Scotsman Baika Harvey, a new arrival in Georgia, wrote to his Godfather in 1775.

Experienced militiamen

Frontiersmen like Dooly had significant military experience to contribute to this new rebel army. Far from being a mob, the frontiersmen had decades of experience in military organization and discipline. Even his father in Virginia in the 1760s had been a member of the militia. Andrew Pickens, John Dooly's later ally had also served in the militia in the 7 Years War, alongside British regulars whose cruelty he found appalling. A record survives indicating that Pickens later kept careful accounts, as public property, of items captured in the fight at Kettle Creek. A formal morning report of Dooly's militia regiment in 1779 shows that it was a sophisticated organization with quartermasters, musicians, boatmen, blacksmiths, cow drivers, butchers, wagon masters, and deputy commissaries. Even his later subordinate, the illiterate Lt. Col. Elijah Clarke, had his routine orders placed in writing.(n28)

Georgia's new Whig government would work to support and win over these people with money, munitions, commissions, and salt. In 1778, and during the years that followed, Dooly and his neighbors erected a string of forts to provide additional protection from attack. Absalom Chappell remembered such extensive efforts made by the backcountry people at building defenses:

"By their own voluntary labor the people of each neighborhood, when numerous enough, built what was dignified as a fort, a strong wooden stockade or blockhouse, entrenched, loop-holed, and surmounted with look-outs at the angles. Within this rude extemporized fortress ground enough was enclosed to allow room for huts or tents for the surrounding families when they should take refuge therein—a thing which continually occurred; and, indeed, it was often the case, that the fort became a permanent home for the women and children, while the men spent days in scouring the country, and tilling with their slaves, lands within convenient reach; at night betaking themselves to the stronghold for the society and protection of their families, as well as for their own safety."(n29)

These forts served as only temporary refuge, however. A Mrs. Newton later related to Jeremiah Evarts that after she shut her door "she dared not open it, for fear of seeing Native Americans; and when it was open, she dared not shut it, for fear Native Americans would approach unseen. The settlers could not live all the while in forts, because they must gain subsistence from the land, and they could not live all the while on their farms without imminent danger."(n30)

The Continental Congress did not intend to rely on just the militia but authorized the creation of five regiments of full-time continental soldiers, as well as ships and artillery batteries, for the defense of the province. Georgia had such a small population, however, that the recruits for this brigade had to be found elsewhere. Dooly obtained a commission as a captain in the new Georgia Regiment of Continental Horse. With his brothers Thomas Dooly and George Dooly, captain and second lieutenant respectively, as well as brother-in-law Thomas Mitchell, who was first lieutenant in the Third Georgia Continental Battalion, they traveled to Virginia to find recruits using £400 that John had borrowed from Peter Perkins but which he never repaid. In Guilford County, North Carolina, and Pittsylvania County, Virginia, John Dooly and his relations succeeded in enlisting ninety-seven men, including deserters illegally recruited from the local military. Upon returning to Georgia, John went to Savannah to collect his bounty money while his brother Thomas took a company to a post on the frontier.

Thomas's death

The consequences of making a commitment into the Revolution now affected John Dooly in a most personal way. On July 22, 1777, Thomas Dooly, with twenty-one men in two companies, set out to return to their post after having recovered some horses stolen by Creek war parties led by Emistisiguo. Some two miles (3 km) from Skull Shoals on the Oconee River, fifty Native Americans launched an ambush. Thomas Dooly fell with a wound to his heel string. Unable to move, he cried out in vain to his fleeing comrades not to leave him to suffer death at the hands of the Native Americans.

This attack, which ended Thomas Dooly's life, came as part of a massive campaign by British superintendent John Stuart to disrupt the efforts of the Native American trader George Galphin, a former ally of Governor Wright who had reluctantly agreed to serve as Native American commissioner for the Whigs in the South. The Native American commissioner worked to move the tribes to a neutral position. John Dooly inadvertently played into Stuart's plans when he seized a Creek delegation that had come to visit Galphin in order to hold them as hostages until he had satisfaction for his brother's death. With great effort, Galphin and the rebel authorities compelled Dooly to release the delegation and, later, to surrender a fort where he and his supporters had barricaded themselves. Galphin then persuaded the Creek delegates that they were being protected from a plot to murder them by Emistisiguo and other British agents. As the headman had arranged such assassinations for the British before the war, the story had credibility. The delegates, upon returning home, led a war party that would have killed Emistisiguo and David Taitt but for the physical intervention of rising Creek leader Alexander McGillivray. After various delays, Captain Dooly stood trial in Savannah and then resigned his commission. He must have believed that while continental authorities could not or would not move against Native American, they could deal effectively with him.(n31)

Complications

Men of the two state militias had already joined and clashed with the oncoming Loyalist force with disastrous results at Vann's Creek, Georgia, on February 10. Pickens's and Dooly's combined Whig command tried to pursue the Loyalists in South Carolina and then, into Wilkes County, before rendezvousing with the survivors of the Vann's Creek battle. The militiamen found themselves back at Carr's Fort two nights after having left it and after two days of long marches. Boyd and his ad hoc regiment of North and South Carolina Loyalists camped at a cowpen or small farm in a meadow atop a steep hill in a bend of swampy Kettle Creek, less than a mile from Carr's Fort and hardly much further from Wrightsborough, on Sunday morning February 14. Pickens then ordered a complicated attack through thick canebrakes, creeks, and woods with his combined force of only three hundred and forty men. The some six hundred Loyalists who held a strong position on both sides of the creek knew that they were being pursued, but they had a capable leader in Colonel Boyd, a man reportedly known to Pickens and quite possibly an acquaintance of Dooly. Pickens sent Dooly and Clarke to lead columns through the woods and swamps to assault the enemy camp on the flanks. When Pickens directed his own men up a narrow path to attack a cowpen atop the hill in the center, Boyd launched an ambush. Dooly would later write that only the hand of Providence saved him, Clarke, and Pickens, as they exposed themselves on horseback during the fight at Kettle Creek. Unbeknownst to the militiamen, they had not assaulted the main Loyalist camp, but merely a location where some of their enemy had found a cow to butcher for a meal. Most of the king's men had crossed the creek and camped on the west side, from where they rallied and then decided, individually, whether to join in the fight or slip away to their Carolina homes.

Still, Pickens's usual good luck had held. Many of the Loyalists, having come along only under threats and intimidation, had already deserted before the battle began. Three of Dooly's rifle men found themselves behind the lines and mortally wounded the enemy commander. Elijah Clarke, despite having a horse shot out from under him, led a successful charge against Loyalists across the creek. Unable to find John Moore of North Carolina, their second in command, most of the king's men fled, either back to the Carolinas or to sympathizers in the nearby settlement of Wrightsborough. From the latter, 270 of their number would be rescued by their pro-British allies. By the afternoon, Pickens, Dooly, and Clarke had won an overwhelming victory.(n38)

Native American and Loyalists

A month later, George Galphin received warning of an approaching pro-British Native American invasion of seven hundred warriors under David Taitt and Emistisiguo. This force of Native American and Loyalists burned Folsom's Fort and other outposts along the Ogeechee River in what was then western Wilkes County. South Carolina militiamen again came to the rescue. The Native American with Alexander McGillivray met defeat at Rocky Comfort Creek on March 29 at the hands of militiamen under colonels Leroy Hammond of South Carolina and Benjamin Few of Georgia. The battle resulted in the deaths of nine Native American, including two headmen, and three Loyalists who had accompanied them. Among the three Native American and three "white savages" (white men who lived as Native Americans) captured was Emistisiguo's son. The next day, Pickens and Dooly led their men against Emistisiguo himself. Three Native American were reportedly killed at the head of the Ogeechee River. In the face of such opposition, most of Taitt's followers deserted; he had only seventy warriors still with him when he reached Savannah. The men of the Georgia militia paraded the scalps of their victims in Augusta although they released Emistisiguo's son as a peace gesture. Pickens and Williamson now had high praise for Dooly and specifically for the intelligence from his network of scouts.(n39)

Such victories by the militia as these reversed the overall military situation. As a writer in a British publication noted about the war in general: "Most of these actions would in other wars be considered as skirmishes of little account, and scarcely worthy of a detailed narrative. But these small actions are as capable as any of displaying conduct. The operations of war being spread over the vast continent…it is by such skirmishes that the fate of America must be decided. They are therefore as important as battles in which a hundred thousand men are drawn up on each side."(n40)

The British army had withdrawn from Augusta just hours before Boyd met defeat. Georgians who had taken the king's oaths disappeared and the Redcoats found themselves unable to control much more than the actual ground their regular army occupied. These professional soldiers from the fortified garrisons in New York and East Florida continued to win the formal battles only to lose the war to a widespread popular resistance that won by keeping the insurgency going indefinitely. British leaders had been led to believe that thousands of frontiersmen remained willing to fight for the king's cause in a campaign of Americanizing the war. The hundreds of men who did turn out under leaders like Boyd, however, actually came from socially isolated frontier communities of Quakers, Baptists, bandits, ex-North Carolina Regulators, Irish emigrants, Palatines, white men who lived with the Native Americans, freed/self-emancipated blacks, and other perennial social outsiders from the frontier mainstream society. These "Loyalists" acted more as refugees trying to find protection than as committed combatants. Even the survivors of Kettle Creek and Taitt's warriors who reached Savannah proved to be of little military value to the king George iii

Hard fighting

Despite such a grim situation, Dooly committed himself to using the new frontier self-empowerment for driving the British from Savannah and thus ending any hopes of returning the South to colonial rule. He left Elijah Clarke to defend the frontier while he and Burwell Smith led a series of campaigns against a British army that they did not perceive as liberators or protectors. In the summer of 1779, Dooly marched with his militiamen to the mouth of Briar Creek, in Burke County, Georgia, Dooly had the dead from the Basttle of Briar Creek buried and recovered a cannon. (n46)

Most of the British forces in Georgia invaded South Carolina, General Lincoln pleaded with the Georgians to launch a diversionary campaign to retake Savannah. Dooly gathered four hundred Georgia militiamen at Augusta and sent a request to Lincoln for supplies, arms, medicine, and money, even though he had failed, as Lincoln noted, to send receipts for the money already advanced to him. After an angry exchange of letters, Dooly did eventually provide the vouchers but he also included new bills for the services of his men that amounted to thirty thousand dollars.

The difficulties of loneliness

Everything went wrong in this Burke County campaign because of Dooly's failure to obtain any cooperation. Colonels John Twiggs and John Baker of the state's militia ignored his call and went on their own raid, alerting the king's garrison to its vulnerability. George Wells refused to recognize Georgia's makeshift government and Dooly's authority. Wells had been elected as the first colonel of the Wilkes County militia and, although he had been a very active officer in 1777, he had lost his position in a subsequent reorganization and election under the new state constitution. He would later win election to colonel in another newly created battalion in neighboring Richmond County. Whether he or Dooly actually held senior rank depended on whom one asked, with no impartial authority available to decide that now critical issue. Dooly had Wells court-martialed. Most of the British forces in South Carolina returned to Savannah before the militia in Augusta could finally march.

Despite this news, Dooly insisted on taking those militiamen who had not fallen sick into the military "no man's land" of Burke County. During that time, supplies from Lincoln finally arrived in Augusta but civilians seized even this succor and absconded with it to Wilkes County. Lincoln also failed to authorize a leave for Dooly's brothers, Robert and William, serving under him in the South Carolina continentals, that would have permitted them to visit John and their surviving brother George in Augusta. They would have been together for the first time since the war began. Whatever Dooly's campaign could have been, he and his men accomplished nothing more than a cattle-rustling raid that frightened Sir James Wright, the royal governor now restored to power in British-occupied Savannah.(n47)

That September, Benjamin Lincoln's army united with America's French allies in a campaign to retake Savannah. For frontiersmen like Dooly, the sight of the professional French army and fleet, the vast artillery, and the sea of tents provided inspiration that may have played a role in the success of their cause. Loyalists across Georgia joined the Revolution as the outcome of the war in the favor of United States seemed assured.

Alone again

The resurrected state government did not last long enough to see its mandates carried out. A chain of events began that would solve Dooly's problems with the new leaders but typically in a way that bode still worse for him. In the spring of 1780, a massively reinforced British army forced the surrender of General Lincoln, the continental American army of the South, and Charleston. Now the people of the backcountry had to face the king's army and its allies alone. Andrew Williamson convened a meeting of militia leaders in Augusta to decide what should be done. Dooly and Clarke argued for carrying on a guerrilla war, even without the regular American army, against the British lines around Charleston and Savannah. Williamson promised to consult with them further after he addressed his own men. Despite the general's pleas to continue the war, however, his South Carolina militiamen compelled him to surrender with them. They all became prisoners of war on parole. Dooly held a similar meeting at his home at Leesburg soon after, with the same result, except that thirty men under Elijah Clarke, Burwell Smith, and Sanders Walker, a Baptist minister whom Dooly had chosen as regimental chaplain, decided to continue fighting as guerrillas in South Carolina. Stephen Heard, now the governor, and the remnants of the government moved to Heard's Fort in Wilkes County and then disbanded.

William Manson, a Scotsman whose foreign settlement project in the Ceded Lands had failed because of the Revolution, arrived in Wilkes County to accept the surrender of John Dooly and four hundred of the Georgia militia on a ridge outside the town of Washington in late June 1780. Manson acted on behalf of Thomas Brown, a lieutenant colonel in command of Loyalist provincials and Native American who now occupied Augusta. Brown, an Englishman, had suffered terrible torture at the hands of a Whig mob and had also been wounded in battle for the king's cause. He too originally came to Georgia to create a Ceded Lands settlement, but it had shared the same fate as Manson's Friendsborough.(n51)

Even then Dooly would not find peace. His creditors from before and during the war pressed him for payment.(n52) Georgia now became the only American state ever completely reduced to colony status. The restored colonial assembly included Dooly in its act to disqualify former rebels from ever holding any public office. On June 3, 1780, British general Sir Henry Clinton revoked almost all of the paroles, thereby unintentionally freeing Dooly, Pickens, and others to return to the American cause without violating their oaths. Two months later, men who had not joined the restored colonial militia could have their property confiscated. Loyalist leaders such as Brown and Wright believed that Dooly and other men on parole only waited for just such an excuse to return to the war. These concerns seemed justified when, in September 1780, Elijah Clarke led Georgia and South Carolina guerrillas in attacking and nearly capturing Brown and the garrison in Augusta.

Rescued and reinforced by South Carolina Loyalist provincials, the long-suffering Tories and Native Americans then began a campaign of retaliation as they went from being the oppressed to the avenged, starting with the executions of men captured during Clarke's attack on the Augusta garrison. From John Dooly's home, Lt. Col. J.H. Cruger announced the arrival of his Loyalist force in the Ceded Lands. He dispatched colonial militia under Thomas Waters and others to destroy the forts, courthouse, and settlements of Wilkes County. Wright reported that at least one hundred homes were razed. Families believed to have supported the Revolution followed Clarke into exile, or their men became prisoners confined in Augusta.(n53) Exact information has not survived, but John Dooly, having almost no other options, apparently wanted to return to the rebellion. Before he could do so, however, men arrived at his house and killed him, quite likely in revenge for his actions earlier in the war.(n54) Sanders Walker, at the least, risked his reputation with both sides to seek a truce. Clarke's request to British general Lord Charles Cornwallis for a cessation of hostilities also went unanswered.(n55)

The American comeback

The American army in the South would make a decisive comeback under Gen. Nathanael Greene. His professional army, in cooperation with partisans, over the next two years drove the British from the South and started the string of events that directly resulted in the decisive Franco-American victory at Yorktown. Elijah Clarke and other Georgia frontiersmen played significant roles in those battles and campaigns. The former Wilkes County militiamen who had served under John Dooly participated in the major victory at King's Mountain and played critical roles in the American success at the Battle of Cowpens. Emistisiguo's fate also became intertwined with the final days of the Revolution. He had led warriors in attacks on settlers in modern Kentucky and Tennessee who had come to the aid of the American cause at King's Mountain and in Wilkes County. On July 24, 1782, in his final act for his British patrons, he died in hand-to-hand combat with Gen. Anthony Wayne while leading a Creek war party and Loyalists in a desperate but successful effort to break through to the garrison at Savannah. The Creek headman thus joined John Dooly and so many other leaders of their conflicted and conflicting societies in failing to survive the war.(n57)

The British evacuated Savannah and Georgia on July 11, 1782. In one of its last acts, the restored colonial Georgia assembly provided the Ceded Lands with courts and separate political representation through the formation of two new parishes.(n58) Even as a symbolic expression of creating local government, like so much of the British policy during the American Revolution, this action came as far too little and much too late for anything more than demonstrating that the civil progress on the frontier existed as something greater than even the war with which it happened to coexist.

Dooly's revenge

In the latter part of the Revolution, George Dooly led a company that repeatedly took revenge for the deaths of his brothers Thomas, John, and Robert in the American cause.(n59) Little else came from John Dooly's participation in the American Revolution. Had he lived, he might have had a successful postwar career in the military and in politics, as did Andrew Pickens and Elijah Clarke. The latter would rise to the rank of major general and would fight to obtain Creek lands for Georgia, inside and outside of the restraints of the official government authority. For his services and sacrifices in the Revolution, Clarke received the confiscated Thomas Waters's property. He would also set up his son John's successful public career that would eventually include governor of Georgia.(n60) Even Thomas Lee lived a long life.(n61) If Dooly's reputation suffered as a Patriot for having surrendered, as Andrew Williamson's did, and his property in Georgia had gone to his creditors, he could still have moved with his brother George Dooly and sister Elizabeth Dooly Murry Bibb to the Kentucky frontier and, like them, start a new life.(n62)

Even after his death, however, the Dooly family's troubles did not end. The restored state government granted land in recognition of Dooly's military service to his minors, but also ordered Elijah Clarke to evict Dooly's widow and orphans from the 200-acre (0.81 km²) Leesburg plantation in response to Thomas Lee's claims. Reportedly, the modern Elijah Clarke State Park in Lincoln County (created in 1796 from Wilkes County and named for Benjamin Lincoln) encompasses that land, including John Dooly's burial place somewhere near the "Dooly Spring."