Margarine Moonshiners/Story Driven Research

Tammy Hepps takes a journey through story-telling that is funny and yet a genealogical journey that teaches us how to research. Hepps routine search on her great-grandfather revealed the shocking surprise that he had been incarcerated in Leavenworth, which led her to trace a group of brothers and brothers-in-law recently emigrated from Minsk, who set out to sell margarine as butter in defiance of the law. Hepps uncovered the hijinks of her great-grandfather, who fled with his family repeatedly before the feds finally nabbed him, the brother-in-law he fingered who was excommunicated for selling lard as butter, another brother-in-law who was arrested for threatening to kill a witness, and more. Hepps uses numerous historical and genealogical repositories to retrace her journey to get to the bottom of this long-concealed chapter in her family history. You will learn how you can better pursue the fascinating leads in your family trees when you think like a story teller.