The Sikes Family

Zenas Sikes’ obituary says that he and his wife Eliza moved to Santa Clara from  Ohio in a covered wagon after they married in 1853. However, research  indicates that Eliza, who was born in Ohio, moved to California with her  stepmother Clarissa Burrell and arrived in January 1853. They came west around  Cape Horn on the ship “Westward Ho” to join her stepfather Lyman Burrell, who  had come west overland in 1849 to become a gold miner.  

The Sykes (Sikes) family has been documented back to Massachusetts in the  1600s, but they had moved to Michigan by 1837. Zenas appears to have left  Michigan in March 1850 with three brothers, arriving in California five months  later. Census records of 1852 list Zenas and his brothers Charles, Loring, and  

Samuel as living in Santa Clara County, California.  

In July 1853, Zenas and Eliza married in California. In 1868, they purchased a  2,400-acre portion of the former Rancho San Bernardo for $2,500. By 1872, they  moved onto their property with their six children and built a one-room adobe  structure to live in. Additional rooms in the Greek revival style, popular during the  Victorian era, were soon added to the one room structure. These additions were  of wood, not adobe. Based on letters written by Eliza, we know that the  farmhouse reached its final outer dimensions by 1881.  

Zenas Sikes died in surgery in April 1881 as a result of being kicked by a horse on  his leg twice. Eliza used part of resulting the life insurance payments to remodel  the house extensively and to upgrade the furnishings. She also continued the  wheat farming business.  

The family’s fortunes slowly declined in the decade after Zenas’ death. Wheat  became less profitable as competition grew and the land became less fertile.  The family began a dairy operation. Debts piled up and, in 1897, the property  

was sold to August Barnett for $10 to pay off the mortgages he held on the  property. In 1917, the house was purchased along with the buildings in the Bernardo community as part of the Lake Hodges Dam Project, initiated by Col.  Ed Fletcher.