It always boils down to context in one way or another.
Newspapers can provide details one would not expect about your ancestor's life. There are two articles in Quincy, Illinois, newspapers from 1905 that reference my ancestor Frank/Fokke Goldenstein.
The first one describes my ancestor selling his farm of 100 acres for $110 an acre. The article implies that the prices are high in the area of the county where the ancestor's farm was located. I knew the ancestor in question farmed, but had never gone to the trouble to locate land deeds for him. This was done largely because I was easily able to document his life, wife, and children with other records.
Searching a little bit further in the newspaper indicated that Goldenstein might have been looking to spend his money by investing it in rice land in Arkansas.
Goldenstein did in fact purchase rice land in Arkansas which is son farmed for a time. In all honesty, I've never looked into obtaining the records of the purchase--for one reason: I was not exactly certain where the farm was located and locating property records requires a knowledge of at least the county where the farm was located.
Family tradition has it that Goldenstein purchased rice land, but the location was not one of those details that was passed on. Locating more information on the son who farmed the land may help to determine the county in which it was located. Here's the problem: the son who farmed the ground died of the flu in 1918 after he had been farming it a very short time. This son was only married 10 days and had no children. I'll need to pinpoint information on him and work from there.
Goldenstein's wife Anna died in the early 1930s and records of her estate settlement may provide a legal description of the land and discuss the disposition of it--if she owned the rice land at her death.
