What you've got isn't a dead end, yet. You've a lot to check up and around, some good help from people here, and good material to work with. You seem to have got a long way if you've only been working on it a few weeks, especially.
I took a couple of years to work back to a very similar sounding dead end, in 1860s - and I've never broken past it in the last 5 or so years. You will probably get through yours.
Follow up those leads you've been given, you'll be amazed where they take you. Look for brothers and sisters of your main quarry at each generation, and trace them back too - it's amazing how one will provide one detail, another will give you another snippet of information, put them together carefully - and CROSS CHECK always before accepting things as gospel.
Early on I let an "of course this must be the one..." lead me up a blind alley, until information garnered that way made me look at that person again, and - no, he was a cousin of "my" man.
And don't believe what you may see on trees available on Anc*stry!! There are some lovely howlers on ones that I've seen linked to some of my people - people marrying before they were born, producing children from 18 right through to 67 - including several who lived through to adulthood apparently with the same first names(!) popping up with a different wife, age, birthplace and job in a totally different area of the country in one census only, then resuming their previous identity - and all recorded as "Fact"!
You're in the early stages of what I assure you everyone on here will tell you is a fascinating, absorbing interest, in the course of which you will learn a great deal about more than your family tree. Happy hunting!
