Yes I forgot to do that....you assumed correctly. When I executed the LoadData changeset, none of the columns with defaultValue Attributes were inserted into the table but instead contained a null value. The documentation is not clear on this and now we know the column tag does not support defaultValue.
I went ahead and used option two and it worked great....albeit time consuming. Really with there was a value attribute for loadData like the insert tag has. Thanks for your help.