Santa Barbara County Biographies

CHARLES SEDGWICK

Submitted by Peggy Hooper

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


CHARLES SEDGWICK, one of the California pioneers, was born in Columbia County, 
New York, in 1829. At the age of fourteen years he began his business life, by 
accepting a position in a grocery store as clerk, and assisting in buying grain, at 
Hudson, New York, and continued there until he started for California. Accompanied 
by his father, on February 6, 1849, he started for this State, on board the ship Robert 
Bowne, commanded by Captain F. G. Cameron, going around the Horn. The ship 
carried 207 passengers, and stopped at Rio Janeiro and Callao, and after a slow 
but safe trip of seven months they landed at San Francisco. They then went to the 
mines on the Stanislaus River, and worked in placer mining, but on account of the 
illness of his father they returned to Stockton, where they opened a market and 
began butchering, which they continued very successfully until 1880. Mr. Sedgwick 
then ran a river express to San Francisco, and in 1882 came to Santa Maria and 
opened a market, which he has since followed. Mr. Sedgwick, with two children, 
have each located 160 acres adjoining, in Chimney Flat Canon, north of Suey Rancho, 
which they are stocking with horses and cattle. 

He was married at Stockton, San Joaquin County, on June 10, 1858, to Miss Mary A. 
Clements, a daughter of J. E. Clements, who was born in Hampden County, Massachusetts, 
in 1811. He emigrated to California across the plains in 1849, coming through Mexico. 
They had a very hard trip and lost nearly all their stock and wagons, and several of the 
party died from cholera. He followed mining about three years, and then ranching in 
San Joaquin Valley. In 1854 he returned East, overland, and brought out some very 
fine mares, and for thirty-five years he was engaged in stock-raising and farming. He 
raised the William H. Seward, the celebrated ten-mile trotting horse. In 1880, after 
eighteen years of litigation, he lost his ranch through the location of boundary lines, 
and has since lived with his daughter at Santa Maria. Though seventy-nine years of 
age Mr. Clements is still active and vigorous. 

Mr. and Mrs. Sedgwick have three children living: the two eldest are married and one 
lives at home, and they have three buried in Stockton. He is a member of Centennial 
Lodge, No. 38, K. of P., and of the A. O. U. W., at Stockton, San Joaquin County, California. 

History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California  - by 
C.M. Gidney, Benjamin Brooks, Edwin M. Sheridan, Vol I, II.  -Lewis Publ. Co., 
Chicago, 1917.