Story cited from "A Dowling Family of The South" by RA Dowling

"2. JOHN2 DOWLING (ROBERT1) was born 1759 in Virginia, and died 1826 in South Carolina. He married NANCY BOUTWELL, 1783, in South Carolina, daughter of LIONEL BOUTWELL and MARY BRACK. She was born 1763 in Virginia, and died March 30, 1849, in Haw Ridge, Dale County, Alabama.

Notes for JOHN DOWLING:

Of Robert's three sons, the youngest one, John, was the longest lived. Unlike brother James who lived only a score of years after the Declaration of Independence....or William who died in the embers of the Revolution, John lived for a full half-century after that world-shaking war began.

In 1824, John, as an old man of 65, knew that his days were numbered and began preparing his will. Yet it was not until 1826 that this old revolutionary soldier died. On June 10 of that year, his son Simeon was qualified as executor of his will. It still lies in the courthouse at Darlington, South Carolina. His worldy goods, exclusive of land, totaled exactly $350.75 at the end of his lengthy life. (The inventory and itemized worth of these goods can be found listed in "A Dowling Family of the South.")

Though John willed that "my body be buried in a decent and Christian-like manner" this must not have included such a luxurious thing as a stone headmarker. He was buried on his own land, probably a stone's throw from his residence.

Within months after the Battle of Bunker Hill, John enlisted in Pinckney's 1st South Carolina Regiment, November 4, 1774. This lad of 16 was not waiting for any declaration by a federal group!....Nor was South Carolina for that matter. The council of safety formed by a specially called "congress" of that colony had caused the King's governor to flee in September. A tempest was brewing in his Majesty's teapot! Four and a half years after John's enlistment in Pinckney's Regiment, his name disappeared from its rolls. John's company, commanded by Levacher de Saint Marie, was possibly one of the American organizations defeated at Charleston. In any event, it was not until 1782 that his military service for this idea of self-government was again recorded. It was then that he is known to have been a guerilla with the dreaded "Swamp-fox," Francis Marion.

John married the following year, 1783. Sister-in-law Mary Boutwell Dowling had probably introduced him to the bride some years earlier, for this was Mary's sister Nancy. Bride Nancy was 20 years of age and John was 24. After his marriage, the remaining 43 years of his life were spent near Jeffries Creek. This was the place that his father, Robert, had brought him to from Virginia. John and his wife raised all nine of their children here, without losing any to malnutrition, disease, or other pioneer hazards."