I can confirm the practice of marrying for land acquisition. My grandmother was born in 1902. Her husband, my grandfather, was born in 1893. He was her grandmother's much younger sister's son. My grandmother was an only child and was 16 when she married. Her inheritance, a very large chunk of land, abutted my grandfather's portion of his land inheritance. Much of the land was rented out to tenant farmers. The rest was dedicated to raising horses. All this was back in the "old country".

By the end of WWII, my grandparents and the surviving two of their three sons lost all they had but were fortunate enough to find themselves in the "American zone" of war-torn Europe and so immigrated to the US. Two generations later, my sons and I are, again, in the real estate investment business. Go figure.

Marie Komar