About those relatives....
Thanks to the kindness of strangers (or a way long-lost, very distant 15th cousin twice removed) my family tree search has had a breakthrough. It turns out that my great-great grandfather and her great-grandfather were brothers. She's done a fair amount of research and thanks to her contacting me and sharing that research I'm now back to one set of great-great-great grandparents.

Unfortunately that leads me to yet another dead end all the way around. I've searched and searched, in vain, for the next set of ancestors in all directions and haven't had any luck. But I have found a few mysteries. For example, who was Jeanette? According to one document she was the daughter of my grandparent -- but my mother never mentioned having a sister named Jeanette. I have her listed as having been born in Canada in 1911 and dying in Detroit in 1952. My mother was born in Michigan in 1924. But in the 1920 census there's no record of a Jeanette living with my grandparents...so what happened to her? She obviously didn't die young. In fact, the record shows she married and had 3 sons. Is she my mother's sister? Did I find a record for another Frederick & Violet Campbell (not my grandparents) that have led me down the wrong path?

It's a fascinating search, and wildly frustrating. Where do I go when every road leads nowhere? On one side I have a John Campbell coming over from Scotland in the early 1800s. Unfortunately every other man who came over from Scotland was named John Campbell and there's no telling which one was my g-g-g-grandfather. On three other sides I have families whose names nobody knows how to spell. For one family alone (my paternal grandmother's) I've found no fewer than 7 different spellings of a last name.

So I dig on. Frustrated, but fascinated. I just wish it were a bit easier...