conflicts with the Indians. 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 colony 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