Samuel Sikes

Samuel Sikes was born in 1841 in Oswego County, New York, possibly the son of Samuel W.

Samuel W. was living in Hannibal, Oswego County, New York in 1830. Samuel (younger) left New York and moved west, eventually settling in western Michigan. He may have been the same Samuel “Sykes” living in Detroit’s Third Ward in 1860.

In any case, Samuel stood 5’4’ with dark eyes, auburn hair and a sandy complexion and was a 23-year-old laborer possibly living in Grand Rapids when he enlisted in Unassigned on February 22, 1864, at Grand Rapids for 3 years, crediting Grand Rapids’ Second Ward, and was mustered the same day.

There is no further record. No pension seems to be available.

(There was one Samuel Sikes, who enlisted as a Private on February 9, 1864, in Company H, One-hundred-sixteenth Pennsylvania infantry. But, again, there is no further record.)

In 1870 there was a Samuel “Sykes,” age 30 and born in New York, the son of New Hork natives Henry (b. 1807) and Amy (b. 1810) who was working as a stove jointer with is father and living with his family in Grand Rapids’ First Ward.