We have ancestors we can find no trace of. We decided they came from Mars! Very frustrating. I read the family changed the spelling but we have no proof of anything about that. What I find very interesting is my dad’s ancestors moved around the SE with my mom’s ancestors long before they got married. I got interested in a person who married a sibling of my ancestor. I started tracing her back and went to 406 and King Clovis the Riparian or something like that. It went further back but that was far enough. I do not know any descendants of that branch. Genealogy is an interesting hobby.
People from the same settlements often removed together and often intermarried. If you see a group of surnames that are familiar from one place to the nextt, it’s worth looking into.