Samuel and Sadye Eicoff
1889-1963 | 1892-1975
Lewiston, MT
While the first generation of Jewish immigrants established stores in nascent Montana Territory’s cities or boom towns like Helena and Virginia City, a subsequent wave at the turn of the 20th century found greater economic opportunity in the state’s newer towns. Born in Ekaterinoslav, Russia (now Dnipro, Ukraine) in 1889 Samuel Eichoff was among this second generation of entrepreneurs. The eldest of five children, Sam arrived in New York City with his family in about 1904, likely seeking refuge against rising anti-Semitism in the area that culminated with a pogrom in 1905.
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Samuel Eicoff, date unknown
He worked as a traveling salesman before heading west in 1912 and was employed by the Cody Trading Co., in Cody, WY. A year later, Eicoff was in Roundup, managing a new clothing store but within six months or so a business venture in Alaska beckoned him away. The historical record is not clear, however, as to whether he went to Alaska for, by the end of 1916, he was in Grass Range managing its Star Clothing Store which featured Hart Schaffner and Marx clothes.
World War I offered Sam the opportunity to prove his allegiance to the US. He registered for the draft in May 1917, organized an elaborate farewell banquet for Grass Range’s “first called” to duty, and was appointed the local chair for the Fergus County War Relief Association. That autumn, however, the Star Clothing Store burned to the ground and although Eicoff’s inventory was rescued, he could not find a suitable new location to rebuild and announced a “Going Out of Business” sale.
In April 1918 just as Sam relocated to Lewistown to begin work at the Jewish-owned Hub store he received notice he was to report for duty at Camp Lewis, WA. The Lewistown newspaper reported: “Sam Eicoff made a short talk in [sic] behalf of the boys leaving expressing his pleasure at being able to go forth to fight for the country which had given him the liberties and privileges which had been denied him in his own country…”
After ten months’ service, he briefly returned to Lewistown before departing to New York for a six-week visit with his parents. But when he returned to Montana in June 1919, he was not alone. Twenty-seven-year-old Sadye Schwartz of Brooklyn, who had worked as a trimmer in a ladies’ hat store and the daughter of Russian and Romanian immigrants, was at his side as his wife of one month.
Within months of her arrival in Lewistown, Sadye opened the Parisian Hat Shop. The store was an immediate success, increasing its square footage and expanding the inventory to lingerie and ready-to-wear clothing, an innovation of the time. In the meantime, Sam had been working at the Jewish-owned Hub store but was ready to strike out on his own and purchased the Leader clothing store from its ailing owner. The “energetic and successful young merchant” opened the refreshed and remodeled Leader in 1922. Two years later, Sadye’s Parisian Hat Shop merged with the Leader.
Sadye Eicoff, photo from Montana History Portal
The 1921 birth of the Eichoffs’ son, Alvin, did not curtail their seasonal buying trips to Midwestern and East Coast cities which also afforded them the opportunity to visit family and friends. (The Eicoffs’ second child, Mary Irene, arrived in 1926.) Such visits may also have allowed them to attend religious services that otherwise would have required a drive or train trip to Butte or Helena. It appears, too, that the New York City Eicoffs were religiously observant given that when Sam’s mother died unexpectedly in 1928, he could not travel there quickly enough to attend her burial which had to be made within the requisite twenty-four-hour period.
Sam and Sadye led vigorous lives outside of their business, socializing in a wide circle of gentile and Jewish friends. Sadye hosted and attended numerous bridge parties and luncheons and Sam was an active member of the Elks, Masons, American Legion, and Eagles. In 1949, Sam and Lester Alweis co-chaired a United Jewish Appeal drive from the Rotarians and Kiwanians in Lewistown to raise $4,000 to assist displaced persons to relocate to Israel and the US.
Both Eicoff children married Jews, albeit not Montanans. In 1947, Alvin, a University of Texas-Austin graduate who was working in advertising for a Lewistown newspaper, married a Forest Hills, NY resident in a lavish 140-guest New York City hotel wedding presided over by a cantor. In the same year, Mary wed a second time, to Murray Katzen, who hailed from New York and Dallas; Sam and his son-in-law opened a new shoe store in Lewistown.
The Leader continued as a solid retailer for central Montana customers until the Eicoffs sold it in early 1952. After extensive travels throughout the US—one seven-month trip to Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois was over 18,000 miles—Sam and Sadye put their Lewistown bungalow on the market, “furnished or unfurnished…Many personal items that must go” in August 1954. They eventually settled in Centerville, California, today a neighborhood in Fremont, and opened another business as they proclaimed their new town to be “one of the most progressive in California…”
In 1963 Sam died suddenly and, unsurprisingly, the joint officiants at his funeral were a rabbi and the Alameda Lodge of the A.F. and A.M. Sadye moved to Chicago to live near son Alvin, remarried but, upon her death in 1975, was buried next to Samuel in the Home of Peace cemetery in San Jose. Daughter Mary Irene was also buried in the family plot in 1984. Alvin, with residences in Chicago and Florida, died in 2002 with his “New York Times” obituary noting his innovations in late-night television advertising, including calling a 1-800 phone number to order a product. The advertising firm he founded in Chicago in 1965, A. Eicoff and Co., with blue-chip clients like Sears and Allstate continues to this day. Alvin was buried in Shalom Memorial Park, Chicago.
An advertisement for spring merchandise from the Eicoff's store, The Leader.