One thing that you hopefully learn early on in your research endeavors is to study the neighbors of your ancestors. I've been working on a project that centers primarily in Fauquier Co., VA & Coshocton Co., OH. I've been focusing on about three families that migrate from Virginia to Ohio during the early 1800s.
Those families for a maze of relationships. The three primary surnames are Wright, McCoy & Graves. They intermarry with each other, plus a Norris family and a couple of others. The web is tangled as one generation of, say, Wright - Norris pairings marries into the McCoy and Graves families and in the next generation you have 2nd & 3rd cousins marrying with great frequency. In a few cases widows & widowers of the families marry one another.
The families move as a group from one locale to another. Study one & you study all.
In my own research, the Crousore, Smith, Reel and Reeder families migrated from Pennsylvania or western Virginia to the Clinton Co., OH area. From there they traveled pretty much as a group from Ohio to Rush, Delaware, Madison, Howard & Tipton Counties in Indiana, with a few siblings or cousins dropping off along the way.
Keep those family migrations in mind as you research. It may be two families or a half dozen, but chances are you will find connections to your ancestor somewhere in the mix.
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