Griffins and Merediths and Smiths, Oh My!

I've been doing a lot of genealogy research lately, all of it online, of course.  If I were independently wealthy, I'd physically go to the cities of my ancestors and research them all in person.  But I'm not, so I sit at a computer for hours at a stretch and Google and "search all records" and evaluate other people's trees to see if their information can be trusted.

I was working hard on the Laper tree when I took a break from genealogy and turned my attention to my house, which was screaming to be cleaned.  I mopped and vacuumed and did laundry.  Then, while putting away Knapper's laundry, I decided his dresser drawers needed cleaning and reorganizing, which I did.  I found in one of his drawers 4 computer-copied and printed books my uncle, Dick Lemon, had made and given him.  They were all about the early pioneer days of Michigan, and one of them was called "The Bark Covered House" by William Nowlin.  Well, it seems as though this William Nowlin, who moved with his parents from New York to Michigan in the early 1830's, is probably a distant relative of mine.  This started me back to researching the Griffins, the Merediths, and the Smiths.  These are very tangled strands, not to mention very confusing to follow, but amazingly, there is a lot of information about these families online.  So last night and today, while recuperating from all of yesterday's housework, I've been trying to patiently unravel the knots and twisted strings in these three families.  I'm making some progress, but it goes much too slow for my liking.