The Loyalist Institute at St. Thomas Aquinas College is a research and public history initiative dedicated to recovering the lives and experiences of those who remained loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolution. Known as Loyalists, their allegiance put them on the losing side of the Revolution. Their choices often led to upheaval—dispossession, exile, and the re-making of lives in Canada, the Caribbean, and beyond.
With support from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, the Institute has built a freely accessible digital resource identifying more than 11,000 Loyalists connected to New York and the greater American Revolution. These names have been drawn from a wide range of archival sources—petitions and memorials for compensation, oaths of allegiance, muster rolls, land claims, and other official records. By transcribing, standardizing, and linking these sources, the Institute provides scholars, students, genealogists, and the public with a searchable, reliable reference point for exploring Loyalist history. This resource is in active development. New data will be incorporated as it becomes available.
