Tamme Tammen didn’t appear in the Nebraska Homestead database at Ancestry.com. Concerned that there might be some sort of data entry error, additional work was conducted. A search of the Bureau of Land Management website for his name was unsuccessful as well (that database contains names homesteaders who received patents for their land). It did locate a reference to a Tamme C. Tammen (a different person as the Tamme of interest was Tamme F. Tammen) obtaining federal property in Nebraska.
Why wasn’t Tamme C. Tammen listed in the homestead database at Ancestry.com? The answer is simple: Tamme C. Tammen received a federal patent to property in Nebraska, but he obtained it by making a cash purchase. Because his patent was based solely upon cash payment, his federal acquisition of federal property did not appear in the Nebraska homestead database.
I decided to query the Bureau of Land Management website for patents in section 13 of Township 11 North 25 West in the State of Nebraska to determine who did receive federal patents in that area. Nothing. There were no entries for that section.
Just to make certain I was searching correctly, I searched for entries in section 12 of that same township. That’s where Tamme F. Tammen’s nephew Focke Goldenstein acquired a homestead. Goldenstein’s name appeared so I was performing my search correctly.
But why were there no entries for section 13? What was so special about section 13?
A human didn’t acquire it from the federal government. The railroad did.
A search of the tract books from the Bureau of Land Management located the page in the book for section 13 in township 11 North Range 25 West.
And that page indicated that all of section 13 was selected by the railroad on 13 November 1874. 
That was why there was not a reference to it in the BLM database.
So if Tamme F. Tammen owned property in section 13 in 1895, he did not homestead it at all. He may or may not have purchased it from the railroad. This entry in the tract book only indicates that the railroad was the original non-Federal owner of the property. There may have been other owners in the interim. The records of the Dawson County Recorder (the county in which this property is located) would answer that question.
They would also answer the question of to whom the Tammens sold the property.
Of course careful readers will note that the Tammens didn’t sell the property. If it was sold, it was sold after Tamme F. Tammen’s death, probably by his widow to whom he willed the property in 1895.
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