For early periods, deed indexes act as a list of residents in a county to give you a good review of who lived there, including neighbors you have noted from census or tax lists. It is an excellent way to retrace the trail your ancestor followed. This is based on a ninety percent chance that your ancestor owned land. If a man is not listed in a deed index, the chances are great that he did not live in that county. Therefore, going through the deeds first may present the only clue that other records exist in another part of the courthouse.
Deeds often give the name of man's wife.
Because of the English common law of Dower Rights for a widow, a man's wife may not have been able to own land in her own name, but she did have veto power over the sale of the land due to her dower rights. For that reason, a wife's name is often included in a deed transcript. Deeds are more complete and go back further in time than other types of records for genealogists. Land ownership evidence was so important that they were the first records reconstructed after a courthouse fire or other natural disaster. Finally, don't discount the power of deeds in your genealogical research.