One additional stop on the Canadian Roots tour was to Sedgewick. Sedgewick is the Flagstaff County seat and about 15 miles south of Kinsella. All of the documents filed from 1910 through 1915 by Grandpa Candy to obtain the homestead originated in Sedgewick. It was in Sedgewick that Henry and Lylie were married when she arrived from Cornwall in 1914, It was at the Sedgewick train station that Lylie pregnant with Gladys, and toting young Doris, Eileen and Edwin boarded the train to begin the journey to join Henry in Los Angeles thus bringing to a close the homestead era for the Henry Candy family.
Cousin Janet, armed with photos from 1955, led the charge to locate the church where Henry and Lylie were wed and the train station. What we discovered was that much of what had been in Sedgewick during the 1955 visit was no longer there. Train tracks passed by Sedgewick but the station had been removed and many of the locals that we asked were unaware that there had ever been a station building.
We found the location where the church once stood, but we were told by a local that it was moved from the site years before. At least there is hope that it still exists somewhere, perhaps in one of the many local homestead era museums. Attempting to locate this building and continuing the search for the original homestead house would be a worthy assignment for someone in the family.
The main street buildings, with a few exceptions, seemed to have been inspired by early strip mall architecture leading us to suspect that there was a fire or some other event that led to many of the buildings being replaced since 1955.
Read on to see several photographs taken by Jon and several from 1955 for comparison:
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| 1955 photo of the church where Henry and Lylie were wed after a mostly correspondence courtship in 1914 |
According to the note by Aunt Dorie she was aware that the church was no longer in its original location in Sedgewick when making the note on the back of the photo. This opens the question of if the 1955 tour found it at its new location (and the photo is of the new location) or that Aunt Dorie learned that it had been moved sometime after their visit in 1955 (and the photo is in Sedgewick)?
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| The location where the church stood in Sedgewick |
All that was left of the train station was a sign identifying the town. There was a small pile of wood debris in the tall grass along the railway that may have been left from demolition of the station, or it could have just been other railway material. Sedgewick is no longer even a whistle stop. Given that so many other buildings from the era have been preserved in the area it is a pity that this station was not. Perhaps it was lost in the fire or whatever event resulted in the more contemporary and banal buildings now lining the main street in Sedgewick being built. There is a small WWI/WWII memorial at the end of the street where the station probably once stood.
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| Sedgewick train station 1955 |
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| Sedgewick is no longer a stop on the railway. |
The main street is still there but many original building seem to have been lost along the way.
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| Henry Candy walks across the main street of Sedgewick in 1955 |
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| Cousin Janet on the main street of Sedgewick |
And, in keeping with Sedgewick being a place of beginnings and ends, thus ended a remarkable day of retracing our Alberta homestead heritage.
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