Isaac Levy was born in France. Where exactly is a mystery, as there are reported records of an Isaac Levy in four different ;ocations in France – Paris, Cherbourg, Reims and Alsace-Lorraine – all born on the same date, Oct. 25, 1845. It is believed Isaac was from a family of itinerant vineyard workers, moving from region to region harvesting the vines and working in the wineries. However, until Isaac immigrated to the United States in 1866 at 21 years of age, little else is known about his life.
Isaac sailed to New York and then onto San Francisco via the Isthmus of Panama. Once again, little is known of his years in San Francisco. Was he working in retail as so many Jewish immigrants did? Was he a gold miner or a laborer? We simply don’t know. We do know that he arrived in the Arizona Territory in 1872. Records show he traveled part of that journey on the paddle-wheel steamer, the Mojave, arriving in Arizona City, a small river crossing settlement on the Colorado River, which today we know as Yuma.
Isaac was said to have been a very affable Frenchman, who must have spoken English as well, as he became a great friend of the captain of the Mojave, who offered Isaac the coveted job of steward on the paddleboat. There are no known photos of Isaac at this period in his life, but a published description describes him as “a rather heavy young man, weighing somewhere near 200 pounds, with the agility of a monkey.”
Isaac was employed during the next two years on several paddle-wheelers, all in competition for the fares and freights along the great Colorado. It is while he was captain of the river barge aptly named Black Crook that Isaac acquired the name that stayed with him throughout his life and legends, the name of “Black Ike.” Newspaper articles speak to the suspected sabotage, double-dealing and cutthroat tactics Black Ike employed to gain freighting contracts and “hinder the business” of competitors up and down the Colorado River.
In 1874 Black Ike was supposedly driven off the river by other barge operators who had organized to eliminate operators like Ike. Actually the rumor of the pending arrival of the railroad, which would make river freight obsolete, was the reason Ike and many other river men left the waterways. That same year Isaac became a naturalized U.S. citizen and a partner with another Jewish immigrant – an Englishman named Isaac Lyons. Together they opened a retail operation in Yuma, but their partnership lasted only one year, with the business declaring bankruptcy. Black Ike then became the well-liked operator of Yuma’s Colorado Hotel.
In 1878 Ike met Magdalena Casares Risse at a dance in Yuma. Following a three-year courtship, the 36-yearold Ike married Magdalena, a 21-year-old Catholic widow from Pothole, CA. Together they moved to Clipp, Arizona Territory, where they ran a store. According to The Arizona Sentinel Newspaper, “due to his physical build, friendly nature and (because he) was able to read most things,” Ike was appointed as the justice of the peace of the small mining town. The couple returned to Yuma in the mid-1880s and opened a general mercantile store. Black Ike became Yuma’s major retailer over the years and served as both justice of the peace and probate judge for Yuma.
In 1891 the successful merchant bought two acres of land from the estate of his first business partner, Isaac Lyons, and built a large brick building to house his growing mercantile/wholesale business and a large home for his growing family. The acreage also held two small buildings that Ike rented to two American Indian families, the Jose Yuma and Jose Mohave families. Along with household chores, the Yuma and Mohave families helped to care for the Levy’s nine children and acted as the children’s guardians on summer excursions to California. Magdalena counted the Yuma and Mohave children as part of her family, and it was not unusual for children from all three families to eat and sleep at each other’s homes. The three families became very close; as young adults two of the children of the Yuma and Mohave family legally changed their names to Levy.
Isaac never lost the river boat tag of Black Ike. He became ill in 1898 and accompanied by Magdalena, who was pregnant with their tenth child, left Yuma on New Year’s Day 1899 for Los Angeles for medical treatment. Black Ike died following surgery for an intestinal disorder on Jan. 4, 1899, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Although his wife and children were Catholic, Isaac remained Jewish. He joined the Masonic Lodge No. 2 of Phoenix, Arizona Territory, and the Ancient Order of United Workmen Lodge in the 1890s. Both organizations were popular with Jewish men but shunned by the Catholic faith. Arizona City’s Jewish river boat captain of questionable business dealings became, over the years, one of Yuma’s most respected and loved pioneers. He was buried with Jewish rites as well as with the Masonic rituals on Jan. 6, 1899, in the Hebrew Benevolent Cemetery in the Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles.
Magdalena married the widower Ben Hyle in 1902. The 1910 census shows the Levy children as members of the Hyle family, although all 10 of the children retained the Levy name. Magdalene lived 46 years after Isaac’s death, outliving her third husband. She is buried in the Catholic section of the Yuma City Cemetery.
