Sentence:  As <WSD>land agent</WSD>, he had observed the successful German settlement at Muenster, thirty-eight miles north, and the arrival of a French-Canadian group who took up homesteads in 1904 at St. Brieux, in the same area. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  (historic) A person employed to manage the legal and practical aspects of developing a land grant.