Episode 185: Loyalists on Long Island with Brendon Burns

The Long Island History Project

No one sheds a tear for the British Loyalists of Long Island, those inhabitants who remained loyal to the crown during the American Revolution. But genealogist Brendon Burns has spent a tremendous amount of effort tracking them down through libraries and archives across the world. The result is his 5-volume series The Loyal and Doubtful: Index to the Acts of British Loyalism in the Greater New York and Long Island Area 1775-1783. It's a meticulous record of people in New York, Staten Island, and on Long Island, acting in support of King George and the efforts to subdue the patriots.

The Loyal and Doubtful is of a piece with Brendon's work as a genealogist at the Daughters of the American Revolution. He helps vet applications for membership, which includes proving that an ancestor demonstrated "unfailing" service to the revolution. This criteria poses a problem on Long Island where swearing an oath of loyalty or other public acts of support could hardly have been avoided.

On this episode, Brendon walks us through the DAR process, the challenges of disproving loyal acts, and what the surviving records can tell us about life on Long Island during the war.

Further Research

• Brendon Burns (APG)
  • The Loyal and Doubtful
  • The Virginia Genealogist
• Genealogical Research System (DAR)
• Daughters of the American Revolution
• Inhabitants of New York by Thomas B. Wilson (via WorldCat)
• “A List of Persons on Long Island”: Biography, Voluntarism, and Suffolk County’s 1778 Oath of Allegiance by Christopher Minty (LI History Journal)
• Audio Footnotes:
  • Episode 45 : Loyalist Richard Floyd
  • Episode 137: Lost British Forts of Long Island