The sixth son and youngest child of Colonel Henry Ludington was Lewis Ludington, who was born in Fredericksburgh on June 25, 1786. At the age of twenty he engaged with his elder brother Frederick in conducting a general store near their home. A few years later he married Polly Townsend, the daughter and oldest child of Samuel Townsend and his wife Keturah Crosby. The Townsends had come to Dutchess County many years before from Long Island, and Polly Townsend's great-grandfather, Elihu Townsend, settled on a farm in South East Precinct, close to the Westchester County line. He died about 1804, at the age of 102 years, and was able to walk about the yard six weeks before his death. For several years after their marriage Lewis and Polly Townsend Ludington lived in a cottage near the Ludington homestead at Fredericksburgh, or Kent, as it was then renamed. Then, in the spring of 1816, they removed to the village of Carmel, where soon after Lewis Ludington bought property which is still owned by members of the family. In the fall of 1855 he completed and occupied the house which is still the family homestead. The wood of which this house was built was cut on lands owned by Mr. Ludington in Wisconsin, was sawed in his mills at Oconto in that State, and was shipped from Green Bay to Buffalo in the lake schooner Lewis Ludington. This circumstance suggests the fact that LewisLudington was strongly identified with business interests in Wisconsin. He went West in the fall of 1838, in company with his nephew, Harrison Ludington, already mentioned, and Harvey Burchard, of Carmel, N. Y. They visited Milwaukee, which was then a mere village, and during that winter made several long trips on horseback through the interior of Wisconsin, for the purpose of selecting government lands. They purchased extensive tracts, largely with a view to the lumber trade, and in 1839 they formed at Milwaukee the general mercantile firm of Ludington, Burchard & Co., of which Lewis Ludington was the eldest and Harrison Ludington the youngest member. A year or two later Burchard retired and the firm became Ludington & Co., Harrison's younger brother Nelson being taken into it. Nelson Ludington, by the way, was afterward president of the Fifth National Bank of Chicago, and for many years was at the head of large and successful lumbering and manufacturing interests and was prominent in commercial life in Chicago. For nearly twenty years Lewis Ludington was the head of the firm of Ludington & Co., which was one of the foremost in Milwaukee, and which conducted what was for those days a business of great magnitude. The firm also had lumber mills at Oconto and docks at Milwaukee. About 1843, Lewis Ludington bought a tract of land in Columbia County, Wisconsin, and in July of the following year laid out thereon the city of Columbus. For many years he personally directed and encouraged the development of the new community, which grew to be a city of considerable population and wealth.

Thus for almost a quarter of a century Mr. Ludington conducted a number of enterprises in Wisconsin, enjoying at all times the respect and confidence of those who knew him and ranking among the best representative citizens of the two States with which he was identified. He was a Whig in politics, and exerted much influence in party councils, especially opposing the extension of slavery, but would never accept public office, though frequently urged to do so. He died on September 3,1857, at Kenosha, Wisconsin, and his remains were interred in the family lot in Raymond Hill Cemetery, at Carmel, N. Y.
------TITLE: Colonel Henry Ludington : a memoir / by Willis Fletcher Johnson ; with portraits, views, facsimiles, etc.
AUTHORS: Johnson, Willis Fletcher, 1857-1931
PUBLISHED: New York : Printed by his grandchildren L.E. Ludington and C.H. Ludington, 1907.
SUBJECT:
Ludington, Henry, 1739-1817
New York (State) -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783
Dutchess County (N.Y.) -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783