Francis Minturn Sedgwick was born in New York on March 13, 1904. He was the son of the noted historian and author, Henry Dwight Sedgwick, and Sarah May Minturn. An uncle, Ellery Sedgwick, edited the Atlantic Monthly magazine from 1908 to 1938.
Sedgwick came to Santa Barbara in early infancy, living with his family at the former Ewen MacVeagh home, 2565 Puesta del Sol Rd. in Mission Canyon, a landmark which was later sold to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
As a youth, Sedgwick attended Groton School in Massachusetts and Cate School in Carpinteria. He graduated in three years from Harvard University in 1926. During his collegiate years he acquired the nickname of "Duke" which followed him through adulthood. His talents in the fields of painting and sculpture were first revealed during his Harvard years.
After postgraduate work at Trinity College, Cambridge, in England, and the Harvard Business School, Sedgwick embarked on what he supposed would be a lifelong career in banking, his mentor being Clarence Dill, father of the undersecretary of state. He worked in banks in Berlin, Paris, and London in the field of international finance.
After three years of banking, he returned to New York in 1932 to study painting under DeWitt Lochmann, who was president of the National Academy of Art at that time. subsequently Sedgwick went to Flushing, Long Island, to study sculpturing for five years in the studios of Hermon MacNeil, who executed the statue of Washington at the Washington monument and the heroic bas reliefs on the pediment of the Supreme Court Building.
Sedgwick was married in 1929 to Miss Alice de Forest, of a prominent New York family.
Just prior to World War II, Sedgwick purchased a 25 acre lemon ranch on Cathedral Oaks road near tucker's Grove in the Goleta Valley as a wartime home for his wife and children, who eventually numbered eight. He also bought the historic Corral de Quati ranch at the south end of Foxen Canyon in north central Santa Barbara County, one of the original land grants dating from Mexican times.
The Sedgwicks retained ownership of the Goleta Valley property until November 1957, when they sold it to Mrs Harriet F. Saperstein. The Corral de Quati Rancho was sold in part to Simon and Brown, operators of feed lots at Betteravia and Cuyama Valley and the remainder to Harold H. Davis of Santa Barbara.
In July, 1952, the Sedgwicks purchased the 6,000 acre Rancho La Laguna from Evan S. Pillsbury III. It was Sedgwick's home until the time of his death.
Sedgwick died in 1967, leaving behind his wife, five daughters and one son. He and his wife left their La Laguna property to the University of California Santa Barbara, the largest single private gift the univeristy had ever received.
Sourced from Francis Sedgwick's obituary.