Jewish Montanans: Julius Levy

Portrait from Levy's obituary in the Anaconda Standard

1833-1901

Helena, MT

The origins and profession of Julius Levy (1833-1901), popularly known throughout Montana as “French” Levy, did not follow the customary paths of those mid-19th century Jews who had emigrated from Germany, Prussia or Poland and who worked as bankers, merchants, clerks, tobacco/liquor retailers, etc. in Montana Territory. Rather, Levy hailed from the French frontier of Alsace-Lorraine, sailed to New Orleans as an adolescent with younger sisters Clara and Adele and later earned his livelihood as a professional gambler and proprietor of card houses in Butte, Helena, Bozeman, and Great Falls. 

Leaving New Orleans to join the Forty-Niners, Levy eventually found himself in the placer camp of Diamond City, M.T by 1865 and likely encouraged Clara and her Confederate veteran husband, Leopold Marks, to join him. But eight years later with Diamond City’s lode played out and seeking new opportunities in a more permanent setting, “French” Levy established a “club room” in Helena. 

The urge for a more stable lifestyle appears to have persisted with his 1879 marriage, at the age of 46 years, to Sarah Mendelsohn, twenty-five years his junior, conducted by an acting rabbi at the latter’s Butte family home. The bride’s sister, Adele, hosted the reception with husband Henry, the city’s first elected mayor, at their handsome brick house now a contributing property to the Butte-Anaconda Historic District, a National Historic Landmark. 

Banker and mining magnate William Andrews Clark numbered among the well-wishers at the wedding and later leased the second floor of his new bank building on Main and Broadway to Levy who outfitted it as a “swell gambling parlor.” Although Levy owned gambling houses, he continued his own gambling and was renowned for his skills at the table & the immense wagers on national and local elections he made from the early 1880s onward. One of his largest wins totaled $15,000 in 1892 with fellow Democrat Grover Cleveland’s return to the White House. 

But, by 1897, Levy’s high-rolling days were winding down when a Butte judge ordered him and a few dozen brothers of “the sporting fraternity,” arrested, a resultant city-wide gambling ban was instituted, and he endured failing health due to “chronic cirrhosis.” Upon “French” Levy’s death in 1901, he was admired as a “gambler among gamblers” with some observers calculating his lifetime winnings to total $2.5 million.