Birthplace, schoolhouse, and a prairie beginning.
Cando is the county seat of Towner County in north-central North Dakota — a small prairie city that appears in the Stadum archive at two distinct and meaningful moments. Rodney Stadum was born here in 1948, making Cando the geographic origin point for the youngest of Palmer and Signe's three children. Peggy Stadum, born in 1942, appears in Cando High School yearbook rosters, placing her student years in this same community before the family's roots settled more firmly in Rugby.
Situated about fifty miles northeast of Rugby, Cando was a modest but civic center — home to county government, schools, and the institutions that anchored mid-century rural North Dakota life. The family's connection here was not permanent, but it was formative. Births and school records are the threads that tie Cando to the Stadum name in the archive.
Cando High School's mid-century student rosters are among the documentary evidence that connects Peggy to the town's educational history, while birth records establish Cando as Rodney's birthplace before the family consolidated its presence in Rugby and the surrounding region.