"I had no idea my ancestor's could save any money to purchase land."
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Don't forget "Homesteading" where people could acquire property with very little money, but a lot of hard work. My great-grandfather homesteaded the land where I grew up. That was one of the two pieces of family history that I knew when I began doing research, having heard all of my life that "Grandpa homesteaded our land" from my father and his sister. And my father had a copy of the deed.

That is all they knew about the "homesteading." The first record I ever ordered was his homestead file.

"On December 13, 1875, he filed a Homestead application on eighty acres of land in Clark County, located about five miles south of Arkadelphia. In the application he stated that he had settled on the land in January 1873. "

"A Patent Deed was granted by the US Government on June 30, 1882."

These quotes are from his bio that I have written. Many (many )years later, I was born on December 13, the anniversary of the date he filed the homestead app.