Page 10 - Discover Fall 2021

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secret behind their success. At that time, in many
states it was illegal to search a woman, or at the very
least, considered most improper. Back then, it was
considered insulting to accuse a woman of such a
crime. The women would often hide flasks under
their clothing, and dare the lawmen to search them,
threatening to sue them if they laid hands on them.
The attitude was so prevalent that those on the
side of the law often refused to believe that a still
was being operated by a woman, choosing instead
to blame it on her male relatives. Juries were very
reluctant to convict mothers and grandmothers of
bootlegging, so that even when they were caught,
they often got off with little or
no punishment.
In one case, Esther Matson, a
22-year-old woman bootlegger
in Denver, was sentenced to
attend church every Sunday
for 2 years. In 1925, a woman
in Milwaukee pled guilty to
earning $30,000 a year from her
bootlegging operation. That’s
over $400,000 a year in today’s
dollars. She was fined $200, and
sentenced to a month in jail. A
woman in Michigan who was
convicted of moonshining was
pardoned by the President of the
United States, Warren G. Harding. In another case,
Ohio governor Vic Donahey commuted a woman’s
sentence to a mere five days.
Moonshiners eventually realized that law
enforcement officers were much less likely to suspect
women of bootlegging, and while some were actually
employed as moonshiners, others were hired to just
“ride along” with the actual moonshiners, because
their presence made it far less likely that the vehicle
would be stopped. In the words of a newspaper
reporter at the time, “No self-respecting federal agent
likes to hold up an automobile containing women.”
It is alleged that women moonshiners probably
outnumbered the men by as much as 5 to 1. Many
of them were honest folk who just needed a way to
8 Discover Smith Mountain Lake FALL 2021
make a living. In Franklin County, the devastation
of the local chestnut tree caused extreme economic
hardship, and it coincided roughly with Prohibition.
These people saw moonshining as a way out, a means
of putting food on the table.
In addition to the aforementioned social
constructs, women had another advantage over men
with respect to the trade: They were much better at
keeping their activities under wraps. Whereas men
were more likely to be loud and boastful, the women
kept relatively silent. Men would resort to violence
at times to settle disputes; the women would resolve
their problems more quietly.
So while the likes of Popcorn
Sutton and the Bondurant
brothers made all of the
headlines, the women worked
more stealthily. Franklin
County, VA is well known as
the “Moonshine Capital of the
World”, and likely deservedly
so. What is less known is that
one of the most successful of
all moonshiners was a Franklin
County woman by the name
of Diana Marie Sharpe, who
went by the alias “Willie Carter”
Sharpe.
In her time, she ran over 200,000 gallons of shine
from Virginia, much of it across state lines, earning
her the nickname The Rum Running Queen. Willie
was quoted as saying, “It was the excitement that got
me. Cars scattering, dashing along the streets.” She
was prominently featured in the Great Moonshine
Conspiracy trial in Franklin County, and newspaper
accounts of her testimony reported that spectators
were fixated on the diamonds in her teeth. She
reportedly had “movie star good looks”, and while
perhaps less well known in this country, she seems to
have captured the fancy of the French. At least one
French film has chronicled her escapades, and there
is also a Tavern in Montpelier, France that is named
for her as well.
Another noteworthy female moonshiner,