Dodge, Loudon Underhill

Loudon Underhill Dodge (September 19, 1839 - March 26, 1887) was an American businessman and artist. Dodge was born in Bayside, Queens, New York. In 1852 he is recorded as a student at the Flushing Institute. He served in the New York National Guard, D Company 74th Regiment, until 1863, when the company mustered out. By 1864 he had relocated to Buffalo, where he worked with the lithography and boardgame publisher Sage, Sons and Company (1862 - 1876). By 1872, he appears in the Buffalo directory as 'paintings' - either an art dealer, or a painter, or both. In 1867, Dodge placed an advertisement in the New York Daily Herald seeking a map canvasser. He appears in the 1874 Rochester City Directory as an ice salesman. An advertisement for his business Spring-Fountain Ice, appears later in the directory. In the late 1870s, Dodge operated the Delaware Avenue Omnibus Line in Buffalo. He also published a short-lived weekly newspaper called the Saturday Bulletin and Review that folded in January 1882, having been defrauded by the failed 1881 State Senate candidate Harvey J. Hurd. After his newspaper failed, Dodge spent several years traveling, creating the 'Dodge Art Publishing Company' and the 'Landscape View Company' to issue chromolithograph views of Florida resorts. This series, known as Illustrated Resorts, were based upon his own paintings done c. 1882. They include views of Lake Helen, the St. Johns River, St. Augustine, Jacksonville, and Palatka. In 1885 he is located in Rochester, New York, where he appears as a 'lithographer.' Dodge died in 1887, after which his wife, Katherine Husbands Dodge (1839 - 1911), continued to manage his business.