All things considered, it's pretty easy to understand why people are so compelled by real estate in Loudonville. What is NOT so easy to understand, however, is why Loudonville is named Loudonville. As we covered earlier, the area is named after John Campbell, the 4th Earl of Loudoun. But why, exactly, did the 4th Earl of Loudoun get this distinction in the first place?
Naming conventions generally dictate that when a place is named after a person, they were either a luminary, landowner, explorer, hero in some capacity, or had ties to the place. All the 'San' cities of California were named by Spanish monks in honor of saints; almost without exception every Washington was a tip of the hat to the founding father; Rennselaer was named after the powerful landowning family; the Hudson River and Hudson Bay were named for the explorer Henry Hudson; and France's capital of Paris was clearly named to honor the famous Hilton offspring. If you aspire to have a place named after you, then the lesson is to be important to the people and the area generally.
This, then, is wh
y Loudonville's honoring John Campbell seems so odd. Campbell was a British (Scottish) nobleman and soldier, whose short career in North America lasted from 1756 to 1757. So his was not a prominent family in the area, and his abbreviated sojourn in the Colonies severely limited his ability to craft a legacy. This may have been a blessing in disguise, as Campbell's tenure was less than illustrious, wherein he managed to alienate most of the leading colonists. Closing all ports when he discovered a merchant trading with France didn't exactly help him in the polls, either. So it's hard to imagine that Americans after the Revolutionary War would give the man this distinction.
Further, even if Campbell DID manage to craft a legacy worthy of being geographically memorialized, the short time he was in the Colonies was in the capacity of Commander in Chief and Governor General of Virginia, not New York. So, ignominious Colonies career aside, one isn't altogether surprised to learn that there is a Loudoun county in Virginia. Unfortunately for our inquiry, the only notable connection that Campbell has to New York seems to be his failed campaign against Louisbourg in Canada, which directly contributed to the fall of Fort William Henry in New York in 1757, whereupon he was relieved of his duties and returned to London.
Lord Loudoun DID, in fact, encamp briefly in Albany while he haggled for provisions on his trip north, but his single noteworthy action while here in Albany was to issue an order putting colonial militia forces under British command despite explicit agreements between the colonists and the British that the colonial militias were to be commanded by their own colonial leaders. Failing in a military campaign and contributing to the fall of a local stronghold are not the things people are usually recognized for, and wrangling control of militias from the locals isn't likely to endear you to them. So one HAS to believe that there's more to the story, because no less a witness than Benjamin Franklin described Lord Loudon's campaigns as, "frivolous, expensive, and disgraseful to our nation beyond conception." Of Lord Loudon's martial prowess, Franklin observed, "He was like St. George on a tavern sign, always on horseback and never riding on."
Lord Loudon WAS, in a perverse way, important to the cause of the American Revolution in the sense that his actions towards the colonists engendered such anger that he helped stoke the Revolutionary fires, and in fact, historians point to his demanding quarter for his armies as the basis of that very specific complaint in the Declaration of Independence and the 3rd Amendment. But once again, unless it was an ironic gesture thumbing a regional nose at the former General, these are not generally things that one gets honored for by the people who ultimately rebelled against you.
The missing piece may actually come from New Hampshire. There we find a town named Loudon, which was also named after the 4th Earl of Loudoun, and there seems to be slightly more justification in the naming. Campbell (the 4th Earl of Loudoun, remember) helped to establish Roger's Rangers, an independent militia of frontier fighters out of New Hampshire. Incidentally, the Governor of New Hampshire who incorporated the town in 1773 was a Loyalist, and named counties after leading British figures and even a distant British relative. But once again thwarting our search for answers, Campbell did not establish a Roger's Rangers in New York, and the area was not named by a Loyalist governor before the Revolution.
It is interesting to note, though, that of the places specifically named after the 4th Earl of Loudon (including Loudonville, Loudoun County in Virginia, the town of Loudon in New Hampshire, and Fort Loudoun in Tennessee), the only two to have dropped the 'u' in Lord Loudoun's name are Loudon, NH and Loudonville. With the shared spelling, it is tempting to wonder whether Loudonville might very well have been named with the older New Hampshire town in mind, perhaps by a New Hampshire transplant. This is, of course, all speculation in the absence of any contributions or meaningful connections to the area, and if any valued readers have any information or insight that could shed some light on the naming of so much real estate in Loudonville for so seemingly incongruous a figure, we'd be glad to hear it!
Vie for your own geographic immortality by owning your own piece of real estate in Loudonville.
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