Thank you for your replies to my enquiry. Yes, I can see how logging (and subsequently farming), and the availability of work land would entice people across. Of course they were also moving away from the UK and its Dominions (and all the social and religious strictures thereof!!) to a new and very different country. The Samains (MD > NY > MI) bought land on the Michigan-Toledo Strip and the family were mainly, but not entirely, farmers or married into farming families. The Wastells (through Canada) were nonconformists and the father, W.P. Wastell (born London 1804), was a minister in the Congregational Church in Port Huron. Most of that settling family worked in stores and offices. Two Wastell sons, born in Canada, moved on to California, but both Samains & Wastells tended to remain in Michigan. David