Jewish Montanans: Moses Brinig

b. unknown-d. 1911

Butte, MT

Image: Stereograph, 1906-1911 by N.A. Forsyth, looking east on East Park in Uptown Butte showing some of the Brinig storefronts at the right behind the wagon with the umbrella. Courtesy of the Montana Historical Society & Archives

An earlier MJP post described the literary career of one-time Butte resident, Myron Brinig, “the first American Jewish novelist to write in any significant way about the gay experience.” Highly regarded for their incisive evocations of the Mining City and its residents, Brinig’s early novels 

featured protagonists informed by his Yiddish-speaking immigrant father, Moses. 

The elder Brinig is one of only about a dozen Jewish Montanans profiled in Helen Fitzgerald Sanders’ “A History of Montana.” Even though the three-volume history was published two years after Moses’ death, Sanders nonetheless took the opportunity to extoll his energy, farsightedness, and determination to succeed. 

Originally a tavern and vineyard owner in Romania with the surname of Fligelman, Moses fled to the Netherlands after allegedly killing a man with a wine bottle and assumed the Dutch name “Brinig.” In 1886, he hastily immigrated to the US with his 8-year-old son Jacob, leaving his wife Rebecca and four younger children behind. The family reunited in Minneapolis a year later where for the next ten years Moses eked out a living peddling produce.  

Family member and fellow immigrant Herman Fligelman, who had co-founded a successful downtown Helena department store, urged the Brinigs, now a family of 10—seven sons and one daughter—to relocate to bustling Butte by late 1899 or early 1900.  Over the next eleven years, Moses worked to not only grow his businesses but also co-founded the city’s Orthodox congregation Adath Israel, a Jewish school, and actively participated in Woodmen of the World and B’nai B’rith, both then fraternal orders. 

At the time of his quick death from pneumonia at the age of 59 on November 26, 1911, Moses, his six adult sons and a son-in-law were operating clothing stores in Butte, Anaconda, Livingston, Bozeman, and Dillon. Although his estate was valued at $15,000--or $485,800 today--and consisted of interests of his O.K. Store in uptown Butte and some of the others, the business’ cash reserves must have been minimal given the Butte store alone owed $11,638 to creditors. A half-page advertisement in the Butte Miner proclaimed the administrator’s sale as “Sensational, Colossal Bargains for Men, Women and Children in a Forceful Slaughter of Prices!” The Brinig heirs survived this challenge, however, and their clothing and shoe businesses persisted on the south side of East Park in Uptown Butte for another forty-three years.