Archives West Finding Aid

Henry Lowndes Maury was born in 1875 in Charlottesville, Virginia, the son of Matthew and Lydia Maury. He attended the University of Virginia and graduated in 1894 with a degree in history. In 1896 Maury began practicing law in Butte, Montana. In the course of his sixty-three year career in law he was an associate of William Y. Pemberton, John L. Templeman, Burton K. Wheeler before 1923, federal judge James T. Baldwin, and A.G. Shone and Sylvester Sullivan. In the early years of his career Maury represented the Montana Power Company, but became a vocal opponent of the Company as well as the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Maury served as Butte City Attorney from 1911 to 1913 and represented Silver Bow County in the Montana House of Representatives as a Republican during the eighteenth Legislative Assembly (1923). He was also a member of the Silver Bow County school board. During the latter part of World War II Maury coordinated relief for the U.S.S.R. in Montana. Maury switched to the Democratic Party and was a committed advocate of F.D. Roosevelt and the programs of his administration. He was very involved in the Democratic Party and politics until he died on January 14, 1959. He corresponded with and was a strong supporter of Senator James E. Murray. Maury also supported Leif Erickson for U.S. senator in 1946, and Henry A. Wallace for President in 1948. He opposed the Marshall Plan, foreign aid, the development of nuclear weapons, the Korean War, the Eisenhower Administration, and was a vociferous detractor of Burton K. Wheeler after Wheeler turned to isolationism and America First. Although Maury voted for Mike Mansfield, he blamed Mansfield for the United States' disastrous Asian policy and regarded him as having a slick image with little substance. Maury married Ann H. Perkins in 1898; they had seven children.