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Loughridge came of Scotch-Irish people in South Carolina. He was born on December 24, 1809 at Laurensville, South Carolina, United States but in his childhood, with his parents, James and Deborah Ann (McGill) Loughridge, moved to the Alabama country.
Loughridge was taught by the Reverend John H. Gray and in the Mesopotamia Academy until he went to Ohio to attend Miami University, where he graduated in 1837. He entered the Princeton Theological Seminary, where he stayed for only one year. After his father's death, he returned home and continued his theological studies for two more years under his old pastor, Reverend J. H. Gray. On April 9, 1841, he was licensed to preach. On October 15 of the next year he was ordained by the Presbytery of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. On June 26, 1886, Loughridge was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity by Miami University.
At the beginning of his career Loughridge was concerned for the Creeks who, deprived of their lands in Alabama and Georgia and moved to what is now Oklahoma. In 1836 the missionaries, who had worked among them for a few years with small success, had all left the country because of their opposition. Nevertheless five years later Loughridge went there to find a place for work, armed with letters to the chiefs from the Presbyterian board of foreign missions and from the war department. In December 1942 he left Alabama to settle among the Creeks. He gained a grudging admittance and built a school at Coweta. There, in June 1843, he began teaching and preaching. Four years later the situation was greatly changed. The mission was prospering, and its founder was publicly called by a Creek chief "their friend Loughridge".
In 1847 the Creek Council made an agreement with the Presbyterian board for joint support of the original school, now become a boarding-school, and of another one, to be established. This was opened in 1850, as a manual labor boarding-school at Tallahassee, and to it, especially, he devoted himself. Under his direction the mission continued to flourish. In 1855 he reported twelve missionaries at work, and the same year began, with The Gospel According to Matthew, the publication of his translations of the Gospels.
As early as 1845 he had published the first edition of Muskokee Hymns, based on the earlier work of John Fleming and the next year had published his Translation of the Introduction to the Shorter Catechism. He had acquired a commanding influence among the Indians. Yet, at the outbreak of the Civil War, white men hostile to the mission were able to instigate the Indians to expel the missionaries. From that time until 1880 he was minister of Presbyterian churches in several places in eastern Texas, among them Lagrange, Goliad, and Marlin. In 1881, he returned to his mission, which had been revived in 1866. From 1883 to 1885 he had charge of the Tallahassee school in a new building provided, at Wealaka, by the Creek council.
Then he gave himself to preaching among the Indians and to completing his English and Muskokee Dictionary, which was published in collaboration with David M. Hodge in 1890. At the age of seventy-nine he had ended his work for the Creeks, in whose progress toward civilization he had played a great part. In 1888 he became minister of the Presbyterian church in Tulsa and in 1889 moved to Red Fork, Indian Territory. For three years he had charge of both these churches. In 1892 he went to Waco, Texas, where he ministered to churches in the neighborhood until he was eighty-six years old.
Loughridge was prominent for his missionary service among the Creek Indians in Indian Territory. By 1861, under his leadership, several hundred Creek men and women had received an elementary and industrial education. Two churches had been organized and two Indian ministers trained. Schoolbooks and literature for religious instruction had been published in Muskokee, the principal Creek dialect. He was also noted as a publisher of an English and Muskogee Dictionary, the first dictionary of the Creek language.
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In 1841 Loughridge married Olivia (Hills) Loughridge. In September 1845 his first wife died and, on December 4, 1846, he married, in Conway, Massachusetts, Mary Avery, who died January 20, 1850. On October 15, 1853, he took as his third wife Harriet Johnson.
