This paper studies a valuable inscriptional record on a funeral stele recently found in Kaohsiung City's Niaosong District, which was dedicated to Madam Cheng, a female member of a merchant family that thrived during the Yongzheng period. The funerary inscription on the stele contains valuable information that can be studied alongside local historical contexts and literary accounts, particularly the Xuntailu, a memoir writen by the Zhang Si-chang in the late years of emperor Yongzheng's reign. This memoir recorded a trial case regarding a property dispute within the family of the deceased. The inscription and the matching historical record can be used to reconstruct how the family rose to prominence, with its significant personages, and most importantly, the biographical information of the deceased. The inscription also mentioned an individual named Wang Sheng, the adopted son of the deceased. Wang Sheng was very young when he was driven out of the family, due to feuds over inheritance claims and other disputes regarding property. He was able to gain gentry status through the imperial examination system and became a person with landed estates. By using literary data elicited from the trial records, as well as the GIS and other relevant sources, this study shows that Wang Sheng held a substantial region in today's Fengshan County, specifically in the mountain range of Ahoulin and Benjihou, where the logging industry was primarily located in the eighteenth century. This paper argues that the cause of Wang Sheng's prosperity may have been linked to development ventures by naval shipyard workers, to the effect that he was able to accumulate more than a thousand taels during the Yongzheng period, and lavishly erected his adoptive mother's grave.