This paper will describe the patrons, employers, and career pathways of Yazıcı Salih of Gelibolu, astrologer and scribe for minor Ottoman frontier lords in late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, as well as those of his two more famous sons Mehmed Yazıcızade and Ahmed Bican, whose monumental works of popular religious philosophy, partly written in vernacular Turkish, are key texts of Ottoman lay piety. Although the careers of Salih, Ahmed and Mehmed occur in a period scarcely lit by documentary evidence, it becomes possible, by reading clues scattered throughout their works and elsewhere, to dimly discern the patterns of a local patronage network centered on the naval frontier city of Gelibolu and its local gazi leaders during the pre-conquest decades. Importantly, the “Ottoman” character of this network evolves over time, as the set of the Yazıcızades' patrons transforms from self-sufficient clique of frontier warlords to men who bear distinct Ottoman pedigrees by 1450. The sultanic center at Edirne and Bursa, with its wealth and ideology, makes no appearance in this story. Cross-generational affiliations with Gelibolu's local military elite allowed the Yazıcızade brothers to acquire a certain conventional hadith and fiqh training which was perhaps constrained by resources, connections, or ambition. This middling education, combined with their study under the Anatolian Sufi master Hacı Bayram, guided the brothers to subsequent careers centered on zaviye and not medrese, and to a freely popular rather than classically academic literary orientation. Yet despite these limitations, the writings of both father and sons were remarkably enduring, though perhaps provided them only with posthumous fame. As such, the patronage patterns enjoyed by the Yazıcızade brothers and their father acquire a double importance, first because they describe the material basis of non-elite literary activity in a period and place about which almost nothing is known, and secondly for the centrality of the Yazıcızades' works themselves, which transcended the marginal circumstances of their production and within a century were read in the palace, in janissary barracks, and in lodges and classrooms across the empire's provinces. The roads that led to the success of these non-elite scholars may thus illuminate some aspects of the capabilities and career-making tastes of writers and audiences in the early Ottoman centuries.