DNA
“We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get round photosynthesis. We cannot say I am
not going to
give a damn about phytoplankton. All these tiny mechanisms provide the preconditions of our planetary life. To say we do not care
is to say in the most literal sense that “we choose death.”
- Barbara Ward -
Author - "Only One Earth," Who Speaks for Earth
Several
years ago in With Regard to Unity I described the Timeshare family/nation as follows: “Recent
statistics indicate that Worldwide the number of timeshare owners as we entered this new millennium exceeded 6
million. 56% of those owners are from places other than the United States and almost two thirds of all Timeshare
Resorts are outside our shores. Now, 6 million does not a large nation make but we are growing
at a rate of almost 20% per year and keep planting our flag in more and more places on this planet. We are a young
nation with the average age of our citizens being 49; we are well educated as over 64% have achieved a college
degree or above; we are affluent as over 88% of us have an annual household income in excess of $50,000; we are
with it as almost 90% of us own and/or use a computer and we spend well over one month per year away from home.
As our citizens travel around the world they tend to get more immersed in the various cultures encountered and
strive for a better understanding of and celebrate that which makes each unique. We visit and become enthralled
with the landmarks, which are indigenous to each of those parts of the world and treat each with the respect they
deserve. We bring no tools of discord or strife; we have no political agenda or intrigue and provide
no negative ramifications. Such local developments will invariably lead to many native from that area
becoming one with us and thus becoming Ambassadors for their homeland, as they too travel the world of Timesharing.
More
often than not, others of our nation will easily identify you because you will begin to frequent the most desirable
destinations in the world, will display a unique smile and have a distinctive gleam in your eyes. That glow of
being one with yourself and with those important to you. Fully satisfied that you belong to an elite society, destined
to the advancement of the process to civilization. Not simply part of the tide, but one of those single human individuals
who started their family on the path of combining with others into the one great unity, the unity which comes from
celebrating the world's unique differences rather than attempting to convince others (by persuasion
or force) that only your country of origin, the race of your forefathers, your personal religious persuasion, your
standards of wealth, your morality, and your form of government is worthy.”
Being
a member of this timeshare nation, this family, has benefits, which often go undisclosed. One of those benefits
is the opportunity to interface with other family/nation members. In the moments of these contacts, frequently
very enlightening, even life altering things occur... And now for my Story...
I
am a member of the Sykes/Sikes Family Association made up of the direct descendants of brothers Arthur
& Samson Sikes of Stewart County, Tennessee. These brothers had married twin sisters
and migrated into Tennessee from North Carolina. When my grandson Brian was born in 1985, he became
the 8th generation of fathers & son’s going back to Arthur. This Family Association had published a book on
the families in 1997. The foreword of that book contains the following statement. “It is believed that the Sykes
name can be traced back to the Yorkshire area in England. Since a definite England-to-North Carolina link has not
been found and proven, we cannot at this time point to the early ancestor who formed our direct link to England.
It is hoped that someone can find this link so that it may be included in a sequel to this book.”
And
so it was that...
During
the first quarter of 2005, Lori, Clark and I hosted yet another of our Owner Update Meetings at SCR. At
this particular meeting Peter and Christine Sephton from Sheffield England were present
and after the meeting we had the opportunity to discuss less formal subjects. Peter asked me if I was into
genealogy and I indicated that yes, to a limited degree, I was. He then asked if I was familiar with a book titled
ADAM’S CURSE that had been written by a man named Bryan Sykes and I said I was not. Peter indicated
that he would get me a copy of the book because he believed I would find it of interest. I think that it was on
Friday that week when he came to the office and handed me the book.
The
Bio of the book indicated that Bryan Sykes was Professor of Human Genetics at England's University
of Oxford and as such has become the a leading authority on DNA. He has been involved is such high profile
cases as the Ice Man, Cheddar Man and researching individuals who claim to be surviving members of
the Russian Royal Family. ADAM’S CURSE was not his first book. It had been preceded by the bestseller,
The Seven Daughters of Eve.
The
essence of the first chapter of this book (ADAM’S CURSE) began with a phone call to Professor Sykes
requesting that he join several other scientists from Oxford at a conference being held by the large pharmaceutical
company Glaxo-SmithKline. What made this particular invitation relevant to this story was that the
chairman of this firm was Sir Richard Sykes and during the planning sessions several members of the company
had asked Professor Sykes if he and Sir Richard were related. Professor Sykes indicated that
the only Richard Sykes he knew was his own son and as far as he knew their chairman and he were not connected
at all. When the car came to pick up Professor Sykes to take him to the conference the driver asked again
if he was related to Sir Sykes and just as he was about to give his standard reply he realized that Sir
Richard and he could be related without realizing it. And, more to the point, maybe he could prove it
by a genetic test. Professor Sykes asked the driver to wait and rushed back to his office to grab one of
the small brushes that he used to collect DNA samples.
I
have become a great fan of the CSI series on TV and watch the original, Miami, New York and Navy
whenever I can. One of the features is always obtaining DNA samples with that special brush so when Professor
Bryan Sykes described taking the sample from Sir Richard inner cheek it was a familiar scene. I don’t
know much about the real process, however I understand that just one brush from the inner cheek will produce a
few hundred cells which would be more than enough to get a genetic fingerprint of Sir Richard's Y-chromosomes.
Because
Professor Sykes was a DNA expert he was able to teach me some basics in just a few words from the book.
As I understand it, there are no two genetic fingerprints exactly alike. If you looked at such a fingerprint it
would resemble a bar-code, a series of dark and light bands that define a unique identity. While the entire DNA
bar-code is unique unto itself, the Y-chromosome is always passed from father to son.
Upon
returning home from the conference, Professor Sykes began the processes of stripping the outers layers of
Sir Richard's cells to get to the very center where the Y-chromosome were hiding. When, after
several days of processing, Professor Sykes was able to lay his own Y-chromosome fingerprint beside that
of Sir Richard’s, align them and trace the pattern, one bar at a time, he found them to be exactly the same.
Their Y-chromosomes matched perfectly.
The
following is a direct quote from ADAM’S CURSE: “It was proof that the two of us were related. But How?
Both Sir Richard and I had inherited our Y-chromosome from our fathers, who had inherited it from theirs, who had
inherited from theirs, and so on back in time. Our Y-chromosomes were tracing two direct lines of paternal ancestry,
which went further and further back into the past. Since our Y-chromosomes were identical, this had to mean that
the line we each traced back through our fathers, our grandfathers, our great-grandfathers and so on converged
at some point to just one man. This man, whoever he was, was our common paternal ancestor, a man to whom both Sir
Richard and I could trace, though our Y-chromosomes, an unbroken genetic link. Since we had also inherited our
surnames via the same route it was extremely likely that this man, our common ancestor, was also called Sykes.
At a stroke, our Y-chromosomes had proved a connection between us that no documents had ever suggested.”
Driven
by this discovery, Professor Sykes began to wonder how many other Sykes existed that possessed the same
Y-chromosome fingerprint and thus were related without realizing it. Professor Sykes professed to
know next to nothing about his ancestry or the origin of his surname. He did know that his grandfather had come
from somewhere in Hampshire in the south of England, however, as far as he was aware, there was no
connection with Yorkshire (where Sir Richard was from) that could possibly link his family to Sir Richard’s.
He wondered if his family had moved from Yorkshire to Hampshire at some time in the past or had Sir
Richard’s gone in the opposite direction, from Hampshire to Yorkshire. He wondered where most
of the Sykeses lived anyway, but didn’t have a clue.
Given
the opportunity to purchase a book titled Book of Sykes, he did so expecting to obtain an in-depth exploration
of the history of the Sykes family, instead he received a folder with some very general blurb on surnames, a suspicious-looking
coat-of-arms and, in the back, a list of names and addresses of Sykes men, arranged by country. While Professor
Sykes was disappointed with most of the book, the list of names was just what he wanted. Researching the list
he discovered that there were far more Sykeses living in Yorkshire than anywhere else. This information
led him to the conclusion that it was his ancestors who had moved rather than Sir Richard's. Hot on the
trail, Professor Sykes at random picked 250 Mr. Sykeses from Yorkshire and the neighboring counties of Lancashire
and Cheshire, and wrote to each of them asking for a sample of their DNA. Enclosed with each letter was
one of the infamous DNA brushes. Within a month Professor Sykes had received about sixty samples of Sykes DNA.
Processing
DNA samples is time consuming and Professor Sykes had some time on his hand so he began attempting to find
out some other stuff about his family name. What he discovered was that Sykes was derived from a Yorkshire word
‘sike’, which is a particular kind of moorland stream. No magnificently gushing torrent, this sike is more a slow
trickle in a ditch, and sikes often marked boundaries between adjoining plots of land. This knowledge was not encouraging
in Professor Sykes' quest to prove that all living Mr. Sykeses were related and ultimately traced their origins
back to a single founder. Since there were literally thousands of sikes in Yorkshire, the chances that only
one man had decided to adopt ‘sike’ as his surname seemed extremely slim. Even though the Y-chromosome results
certainly suggested that at least Sir Richard and Professor Sykes descended from the same man, the
likelihood of a large amount of the random samples collected being similarly related, seemed remote.
The
results were in. Fully half of the Sykeses DNA, randomly collected from the three counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire
and Cheshire, had exactly the same fingerprint. There was only one possible explanation for these spectacular
and unexpected results. The volunteers, including Sir Richard and Professor Sykes, who had the same
Y-chromosome fingerprint must have inherited it from a common ancestor. All of them must be able to trace a direct
father-son lineage back to one man. But who was this man? What about the group of volunteers that did not match
Sir Richard's and Professor Sykes' Y-chromosome fingerprint? A few, while not exact matches, were
close to the ‘Sykes” Y-chromosome. The others had very different ‘bar-codes’ and were completely unrelated to it,
as far as Professor Sykes could tell. Not only that, they were obviously not related to one another either.
There was no other cluster of related Y-chromosomes to suggest that Professor Sykes had identified the descendants
of a second ‘original’ Mr. Sykes. In the book Professor Sykes went into some detail about how this may have
occurred however, unless your name is Sikes or Sykes these details would bore you.
As
the first chapter of the book continued, Professor Sykes related a second piece of good fortune, one that
assisted in uncovering some more details about his ancestral lineage. Sykes is a Yorkshire name and Yorkshire
just happened to be the home of one of the best surname experts in the whole of England, Dr. George Redmonds.
Professor Sykes indicated that without Dr. Redmonds, the Sykes Y-chromosome study would have ended up as
a cold formal scientific report. A report that was interesting, to be sure, but with no real connection to the
history and landscape that he was now aware of having been the home of his genetic ancestors for the best part
of a thousand years. Sykes Country, as he now calls it is part of West Yorkshire southwest of Huddersfield.
Professor
Sykes and Dr. Redmonds had first met when they were making a series of radio programs for the BBC on
the subject of surnames, genes and genealogy. Dr. Redmonds had become interested in the Sykes surname and
began to search for the earliest records that mentioned the Sykes name. Within a short space of time he had unearthed
a reference in the court rolls of 1286 to a Henri del Sike. The particular court record that Dr. Redmonds
had found referred to a tenancy dispute involving Henri del Sike in lands near the village of Flockton,
a few miles south of Huddersfield. The village is still there, and there are still Sykeses in Flockton.
However, a quick look at the electoral roll indicated that there were far more in the small town of Slaithwaite,
about nine miles away.
Upon
receiving this information, Professor Sykes instituted a new DNA study of the Mr. Sykeses in both Flockton
and Slaithwaite that revealed a cluster of the exact Y-chromosome as had previously been discovered in Yorkshire,
Lancashire, and Cheshire. What had began as an effort to establish that Professor Sykes and Sir
Richard were not related had now grown into a genetic link back to Henri del Sike.
Professor
Sykes related in the book, a trip he and Dr. Redmonds took to the tenancy of land referenced in Henri
del Sike document that Dr. Redmonds had found. The following is a quote about that visit: “There was
no sign of the farmhouse which my ancestor, the very first Sykes, had occupied, but even so, it felt quite extraordinary
to be here... The field and croft boundaries were as they had been in the late thirteenth century when Henri del
Sike was living here. As I stood, I could almost here the voices of children - my ancestors - laughing as they
threw pebbles into the stream. This reminded me of an occasion when I had stood on the banks of the Tennessee
river near Paris Landing, TN and imagined similar sounds coming from my ancestors. Several years ago, I had related
these thoughts in the Sykes/Sikes Association Newsletter titled Lineage.
FINAL THOUGHT
In
a world of 6,431,782,842 people, how unlikely were the events surrounding the five men (Professor Bryan Sykes,
Sir Richard Sykes, Henri del Sike, Gerald (Jerry) Sikes and Peter Sephton) portrayed in this story to
have happened? How unlikely would it be that a discovery such as DNA would lead to the discoveries about the Sykeses
contained in this story as the result of a simple phone call? How unlikely was it that years after this Kentucky
boy made his way from the lower Ohio River bottomlands to the desert of Arizona, an occasion would
occur that allowed the meeting of a man who had spent his childhood in moorland in the South of England?
Were it not for the common ground of the Timeshare Nation, as portrayed in With Regard to Unity,
Peter Sephton and Jerry Sikes would have never met. Were it not for a phone call to Professor
Bryan Sykes requesting that he speak at a pharmaceutical company conference, the journey into the genetic world
of the Sykeses may never have occurred. Were it not for the coming home to Scottsdale Camelback Resort
by our owners Peter and Christine, these sequence of events, which were life altering for me, would
never have occurred. It is more likely that I would have never discovered ADAM’S CURSE and never read its
first chapter titled The Original Mr. Sykes and never known of the possibility that my DNA may well disclose
a direct line back to that original Mr. Sykes.
In
the first part of this column I quoted from My Sykes/Sikes Family Associations book foreword “It is believed
that the Sykes name can be traced back to the Yorkshire area in England. Since a definite England-to-North Carolina
link has not been found and proven, we cannot at this time point to the early ancestor who formed our direct link
to England. It is hoped that someone can find this link so that it may be included in a sequel to this book.”
I don’t know if Henri del Sike of Flockton England fills that link or not, however you
can be sure that I intend to contact Professor Bryan Sykes and if possible send him a sample of my DNA.
Who
knows when Peter and Christine Sephton will once again return home to SCR? When that
occurs, I may have a tale to tell them about how our mutual belonging to the Timeshare Nation brought about
a wonderful discovery within my personal history and that because of them, we may have made a gigantic leap from
the early 1700’s in North Carolina / Tennessee, USA to late 13th century England.
PS: In case you are wondering, the surnames Sikes and Sykes are interchangeable.
JS 4/05
