Registered new domain that has history...

So I bought a domain name after all the regular research on my niche. I found a great emd that has low comp.
When I went to register the domain on namecheap I was surprised that the .com and . org were still available so I registered the .com.
Now after setting up my name servers and getting my site online I found out they website has backlinks I have the seo quake toolbar.
In my webbrowser wich is super helpfull everybody should get it!
Now the backlinks are only in the 100-200 region. So I have 2 questions for the people that have any experience with this.

1. Can I find out if this website was penalized for some reason or if I will be able to rank it like any normal new website.
2. Using web.archive.org I found out the website had about 6 pages of content and were all about the keyword. Since this all was deindexed can I use this content for web 2.0's as unique content or do you think using this content as a starter and expand the website with the stuff I had in mind.

best regards

I would just go with your original plan and not use the old content - it might be already used by someone else as going for archive.org-content is an old trick. And, of course, never underestimate legal issues.

Since the backlinks are in the low three-digit region you won't have that much of a problem to get it into the index even if it was penalized before. Around 50 legit and strong links should be sufficient to lift any concerns of g's algo.