She is remembered as a colorful character and force to be reckoned with. As one observer later recalled, “She didn’t ask you to do something; she told you what to do and how and when to do it. She did all the talking and driving, Art didn’t know how. And Art did exactly what she told him.”

The three moved to the Upper Peninsula at a pivotal time in American history, the Prohibition era. Michigan passed a state law banning alcohol in 1918 and the Volstead Act prohibiting alcohol on a national scale passed in January 1920.

But neither law stopped people from drinking, brewing, nor selling their own liquor. Illegal speakeasies cropped up everywhere during Prohibition, including in Big Bay at the Lucys’ place.

“Old Lady Lucy,” as she was locally known, lived in a two-story building framed by apple trees on the outskirts of town, just south of Tempel’s General Store (now Cram’s General Store). Those apple trees had an interesting story. Supposedly, Rose had purchased the trees one year from a Montgomery Ward catalogue. But after the trees arrived, she refused to pay for them. Having already planted them in her yard, she said that if the company wanted the trees back, they’d have to come and dig the trees up themselves.

The home of Rose Anna and Arthur Lucy. (Photo courtesy of the Marquette Regional History Center)

The home was known as one of the nicer houses in Big Bay at the time, covered in mock-brick-patterned tan tarpaper and completely wired for gas lamps. It was here that Old Lady Lucy sold her homemade moonshine: 25 cents for a glass of “moonshine whiskey” and 2 dollars for a pint.

These prices come not from any business records that the Lucys kept from their illegal business, but from court testimonies. It wasn’t always easy operating an illegal speakeasy, and the Lucys ran afoul of the law several times.

Art and Rose Anna Lucy were arrested for illegally possessing and selling intoxicating liquor (moonshine) at least five times between 1925 and 1929. At first, they got away without severe punishments, but as Prohibition went on, the law started to crack down harder on people selling and making their own alcohol like the Lucys.

Two different arrests resulted in $500 fines for the two, about $8,000 in today’s economy. And both spent time in the Marquette County Jail. But officials wanted to get more on the Lucys, and in 1928 a sting operation revealed just what they wanted.

An undercover agent named Rollie Ramie purchased whiskey five times from Old Lady Lucy in September 1928. Rose Anna Lucy appeared in Marquette County Circuit Court on February 25, 1929, to face charges stemming from the sales to Ramie. This eventually resulted in her being sent on July 14, 1929, to the Federal Institution for Women at Alderson, West Virginia, a recently opened women’s prison. Mrs. Lucy was the first woman sent there from the U.P.

After serving her time at Alderson, Rose Anna Lucy returned to Big Bay. Around the same time, Prohibition came to an end. The sting operation had a lasting effect on Old Lady Lucy. For the rest of her life, she never allowed anyone besides family inside her house.

In 1950, Rose’s daughter, Anna, along with her husband and six of her kids lived with them.

Rose Anna Lucy died on March 26, 1963. Art followed less than four months later. Their house and the hill it stood on have since been razed to make room for a legal business.