Birdie Brown Was in Business

Birdie Brown made moonshine during Prohibition. She also ran a place where people could gamble, operated a dry-cleaning business, and established her own homestead in rural Montana through the Homestead Act.

That’s quite a résumé for a Black, single woman born in Missouri in the late 1800s.

An Entrepreneur by Any Other Name

Just think about what she did. On her own, facing the harshest of odds, she found ways to make a living.

She moved across the country. Established a homestead. Developed multiple sources of income. Made a product people wanted. Created a place for customers to gather, where they felt safe and comfortable.

Today we’d probably call that diversification and attention to CX.

Birdie probably called it Friday night.

Women Have Been Doing This for a Long Time

We sometimes talk about women in business and leadership as though it’s a relatively recent development. But women like Birdie remind us there’s a much longer history.

Women have been building businesses, managing farms, selling products, serving customers, and creating opportunities for themselves for generations. They just haven’t been given the credit and spotlight they deserve. Many did it during periods when access to capital, property, education, and traditional positions of authority was considerably more limited.

Their businesses may have looked different. The entrepreneurial instincts look pretty familiar.

See an opportunity. Figure out what people need. Use the resources available to you. Adapt. Keep going.

A Businesswoman to the End

Birdie’s story also has one final twist that seems almost too remarkable to be true. In 1933, an explosion occurred at her home. Birdie operated a dry-cleaning business that used gasoline. She also had a still operating with a fire underneath it. Gasoline and an open flame made for a dangerous combination.

Sadly, the resulting blast mortally injured Birdie.

It’s a tragic ending to a remarkable life, but it also leaves us with an image that is hard to forget: a woman on her own Montana homestead, running multiple enterprises and finding her own ways to make a living.

Nearly a century later, we have new terminology for much of what Birdie was doing.

Entrepreneur.

Business owner.

Woman in leadership.

Birdie Brown was all of them before anyone needed to give her the title.

‍Call to Action

‍Who is a woman entrepreneur or leader, past or present, whose story deserves to be told more often?

Let’s discuss in the Comments section at the bottom of this page.

Enjoy business lessons from the history and craft of moonshining? Explore more articles in The Stillhouse Blog, listen to the Against the Grain Podcast, or learn more about my upcoming book, Against the Grain: Business Lessons from the Still.