Meet the Pocklington men who helped build Detroit

The answer might surprise you. Almost 200 years ago - between 1830 and 1860 - more than 40 men and women from Pocklington and surrounding villages sailed across the Atlantic to begin a new life in the United States. They settled in an area of scrub and marshes to the east of what was then the small town of Detroit, and named it Leesville after one of the first settlers to arrive there, Pocklington man Charles 'Father' Lee. And the settlement they founded was to play an important part in the growth of their neighbouring town into the metropolis it became.

Most of the emigrants were agricultural labourers from in and around Pocklington - one of the reasons for their emigration may have been the high cost of food at home, brought about by the Enclosure Act of 1783, which reduced the number of small farms and smallholdings. Others - such as John Lamb, from Melbourne - seem to have been brickmakers.

Whatever their backgrounds, and despite many hardships and even tragedies along the way, many of the settlers and their children thrived in their new surroundings.

The wagon shop and blacksmith in Leesville founded by Richard Lamb

"The emigrants had mostly been labourers or tradesmen back in East Yorkshire," says Phil Gilbank, chairman of the Pocklington Local History Society. "But uncleared land in and around Leesville was cheap, enabling them to establish thriving businesses as farmers and owners of saw-mills, blacksmiths and brickyards."

Detroit itself was growing, too. The population increased from 2,000 in 1830 to 200,000 by 1890. Thanks to Henry Ford, who was born in nearby Dearborn, Michigan, it would go on to become the centre of the giant US car-making industry - the 'motor city' of Motown fame. So although those early emigrants from East Yorkshire had set down their roots in the countryside outside Detroit, it over time became absorbed into one of America's fastest growing industrial settlements.

The General Motors HQ in modern Detroit

Leesville, the community the emigrants set up and named after one of their own, seems to have played a key part in the growth of Detroit.

"Several of the emigrants had brickmaking experience back in East Yorkshire and Leesville became the centre of the eastern Detroit brick industry," Phil says. "A number of the emigrants increased their wealth, either through their timber and brick businesses feeding Detroit's growth, or by selling their farms for residential development and moving a little further afield into rural Michigan."

We know about those long-ago emigrants from East Yorkshire thanks largely to the efforts of family historian John Kent.

John lives in Surrey. But he married into the Lamb family, one of Pocklington's oldest. He started to research his wife Jackie's family history - and as he tracked a couple of her ancestors who had emigrated to America in the mid-19th century, he noticed connections and inter-marriages with a number of other local families on both sides of the Atlantic.

He then came across a 1905 book, 'Tales of a Forgotten Village' by Detroit resident William Sugars, which helped him identify the families from Pocklington and the surrounding villages who had founded Leesville.

"The deeper I looked into the Lamb family emigrants, the more names such as Lee, Vokes, Walker and Houghten kept cropping up as leading lights of the Leesville settlement," he says. "When I tracked them all back they invariably came from Pocklington, Barmby Moor, Seaton Ross, Everingham or nearby villages. When I totalled them up over 40 adults from the Pocklington district all arrived in and around Leesville with their families between 1830 and 1860."

The one who stayed behind: The shop in Railway Street, Pocklington, belonging to wheelwright Thomas Lamb, the only one of five Lamb brothers not to go to the United States

The lives of the early pioneers who founded the original settlement of farmsteads, blacksmiths, brickmakers and sawmills that became Leesville were often hard, and sometimes filled with loss and tragedy.

Their settlement was eventually swallowed up as Detroit expanded. But some of the original settlers and many of their descendants went on to become important and successful figures in Detroit and Michigan. And thanks to John's research, their stories live on.

Here are a few of them:

Charles 'Father' Lee

Charles was a major figure in the development of Leesville, although his two sons, Thomas and Charles junior, who was aged just 19 when he emigrated, actually travelled out to the USA before their father.

'Father' Lee emigrated with his wife Betty Vokes, daughter Elizabeth and sons James and Robert in 1832, travelling with his wife’s father James Vaux and James’ wife Susannah.

Charles 'Father' Lee

His son Charles Jnr and his brothers bought some land for farming. They also built a wind-driven saw mill which was then converted to steam power and operated successfully for many years. By 1841 Charles Jnr had also set up a brickworks in Leesville which he operated for the next twenty years. The saw mill and brickworks gave them a good income.

By 1845 Charles 'Father' Lee was on the Board of Trustees that built the Congress Street Methodist Church, the first Methodist Church in Detroit. He was involved in all aspects of life in Leesville, and lived a long life (by the standard of the times), dying in 1867 of lumbago, aged 79. His wife Betty died six months later.

Charles Lee, son of 'Father' Lee

Charles was born in 1811, worked in shops and on farms at Pocklington, emigrated in 1830 and initially continued as a farm labourer. But he eventually became the owner of seven saw-mills, forestry lands, and substantial property, invested in railroads, was director of two banks and stood for the senate, just missing out on election in a close contest in 1854. He lived in a house dubbed 'the lumber baron's mansion'. One of his saw-mills is said to have produced the wooden dashboards for the early Detroit automobiles.

James “Boss” Vokes

James Vokes was born in Pocklington. He was the son of William Vokes, a Primitive Methodist Minister from Barmby Moor.

James married Mary A Robson in Catton near Pocklington on March 13, 1842 and later that year travelled out to Michigan with John Lamb. It was a very stormy crossing and he stopped for a year in Kingston, Canada before coming on to Leesville in 1843.

The US Federal Census for 1850 shows him by then to have become a blacksmith. He lived with his wife Mary, his son James, his mother Susannah, and his brother and sister, Robert and Jane, next door to John Lamb.

James 'Boss' Vokes

There was tragedy to come, however. His wife and son died, and he actually returned to Pocklington and remarried before and recrossing the Atlantic to Leesville. By 1860 his second wife had also died and he was living with his third wife Bridget, one-year-old son Nathaniel and sister Jane.

Life became more settled and by 1880 James had four children, a sizeable homestead and 100 acres of land including farming, lumbering and brickmaking.

James was an ardent Republican and abolitionist during the Civil War, and a devout Methodist who worked in a number of temperance movements.

He died died at Grosse Pointe, Detroit, on June 2, 1894.

John Lamb

John was born in Barmby Moor in 1811 and married Mary, the sister of James 'Boss' Vokes. They had five children in East Yorkshire, where John worked as a brickmaker in Melbourne, before emigrating to Leesville in 1842 where they had another eight children.

Several Lambs were famous for singing, both in Pocklington and in Leesville, and John led the hymn singing in Leesville unaccompanied for several years; three of his nephews who emigrated to Leesville all fought for the union side in the American Civil War in the early 1860s.

David Vokes

The grandson of James 'Boss' Vokes, David went into the law and became a Detroit circuit judge.

Henry Walker

The son of one of the original emigrants, Robert Walker of Barmby Moor, Henry worked as a teenager in his father's brickyard in Leesville but went into the medical profession and became the Chief Medical Officer for Wayne County, Michigan.

THE JOURNEY ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

Until the introduction of steam ships in 1860, sail was the only way of crossing the Atlantic. A good crossing from Liverpool took about 35 days: some took as much as 60 days.

Most of the East Yorkshire migrants were agricultural labourers or similar, so would have travelled the most affordable way - by steerage. This was cramped, poorly ventilated accommodation between decks in what was in effect a dormitory with bunks down the sides and tables in the centre.

• John Kent, Phil Gilbank and Pocklington Local History Society archivist Andrew Sefton will give an illustrated talk 'A little bit of Pocklington in Detroit' at The Old Court House in Pocklington at 7.30pm on Thursday September 22. Tickets £2 on the door.