Los Angeles County CA Archives Biographies.....Loudon, James A. 
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Author: Luther A. Ingersoll (1908)

    COL. JAMES A. LOUDON. Santa Monica by the sea, with its superb scenic
situation and surroundings, its delightful climate and splendid public
institutions, has drawn permanently to its confines many people of culture,
refinement and wealth, seeking retirement from the strenuous life of a business
world. These people have purchased its choicest residence property, own its most
luxurious homes and have become a most important factor in making it one of the
wealthiest and most attractive seaside home cities of the Pacific Coast. Colonel
Loudon is one of its recently most welcome citizens. Colonel Loudon is a native
of Tennessee and grew up in the city of Memphis. His paternal ancestors were
Scotch and are directly descended from Lord Loudon, who was the owner of
Loudon's Bonny Hills, Woods and Braes, one of the most beautiful feudal estates
in the lowlands of Scotland. Col. Loudon is a son of John Loudon, father of
eleven children, all of whom, save three, the subject of this sketch, a brother,
Hopkins Loudon, and Miss Debbie Loudon, died before the demise of the father.
Col. Loudon grew up in the city of Memphis amid the busy scenes of a most
delightful social influence and broad hospitality of southern life. When the
calamities of civil war overtook his home city he, even though a youth of
fifteen years, volunteered in the Confederate army and served with distinction
throughout the entire conflict, from 1861 to the final ending in 1865, in
defense of his country's cause. He entered the cavalry service as a private
soldier and at times was in the hottest of the fray. He was three times captured
by the enemy and twice escaped. (See "Harvey Mathew's History of the Old Guards
in Gray" and also "Historical Biography of Eminent Americans.") Col. Loudon, at
the close of the war, in 1865, was paroled as a Confederate officer from the
military prison at Little Rock, Arkansas, and returned to his native state. For
many years he has been intimately associated with the business, civic and
political growth of the city of Memphis. Essentially a man of affairs, his
activities have been along business lines and his rewards amply the result of
successful enterprise.

    Col. Loudon, January 13, 1870, married Miss Virginia Lewis Shanks. She died
leaving a son, Lewis S. Loudon. September 7, 1904, he married Miss Sarah,
daughter of Hon. Albert K. Hancock, then a prominent lawyer of the Memphis bar
and a member of the Tennessee State Senate, now a resident of Santa Monica and
practicing his profession in Los Angeles. Mrs. Loudon is a lady of charming
personality and social refinement. They have two daughters, Lou Lou Ann, aged
three years, and Arlington, a native daughter of California, aged one year. Col.
Loudon, in January, 1906, with a view of retiring from active business pursuits,
came to California and to Los Angeles and purchased a home in Ingraham street,
where the family lived for a period of about eight months. The following
November he purchased an orange grove at San Gabriel and there lived for a time.
The following August of 1907 he purchased Gray Gables of the W. H. Perry estate
on Ocean avenue, Santa Monica, which they regard as their permanent family home.
Col. Loudon declares to the writer that "Santa Monica has, in my opinion, the
finest climate on earth" and here hopes to exceed the age of his lamented
mother's father, David Trowbridge, who lived to the age of one hundred and one
years, " 'and here, where the sunset turns the ocean's blue to gold' may I be
buried, if it is God's will."


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Ingersoll's century history, Santa Monica Bay cities: prefaced with a brief
history of the state of California, a condensed history of Los Angeles County,
1542 to 1908: supplemented with an encyclopedia of local biography and
embellished with views of historic landmarks and portraits of representative
people.

Los Angeles: Luther A. Ingersoll (1908)


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