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Levi Strauss

1829–1902 · 73 years Tier II

The peddler who never invented the trousers that carry his name

Portrait of Levi Strauss — Unknown author — 1902 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

He was born Löb Strauß in Buttenheim, in Franconian Bavaria, on February 26, 1829, the son of Hirsch Strauss and his second wife Rebecca. In 1847, at 18, he crossed with his mother and two sisters to join his brothers Jonas and Louis, who ran a wholesale dry goods house at 108 Liberty Street in Manhattan. His apprenticeship was a pack: he walked kettles, blankets and sewing goods out of his brothers' stock to whoever would buy them. His sister Fanny married David Stern and moved to St. Louis. Levi went to Louisville and sold the family's supplies in Kentucky. He became a citizen in January 1853. When the brothers decided the gold economy needed a West Coast branch, they sent him.

He reached San Francisco by steamship through Panama in early March 1854 and moved in with Fanny's household. Levi Strauss & Co. began as an importer of his brothers' goods: clothing, bedding, combs, purses, handkerchiefs. He also made tents. One customer was Jacob Davis, a Latvian-born tailor in Reno who bought bolts of denim from him and who, in 1871, worked out that copper rivets at the pocket corners and the base of the fly would stop work pants tearing. Davis could not afford a patent and wrote to Strauss proposing a partnership. Patent 139,121 issued on May 20, 1873, half assigned to the company. The arched stitching on the back pockets dates from the same year. In 1890 the patent lapsed into the public domain and the riveted waist overall was given a lot number: 501.

The company's own advertising later had him selling his first jeans to gold-rush miners. The gold rush peaked in 1849, five years before he arrived, and the manufacture of denim overalls did not begin until the 1870s. He did not invent the rivet either. Davis did, and Davis's name stands beside his on the patent. The harder fact sits on a garment label. A pair of Levi's from the 1880s, pulled out of an abandoned New Mexico mine shaft and auctioned in 2022 for $87,400, is stamped "the only kind made by white labor" — a sales pitch aimed at buyers who had just watched Congress pass the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. The company reversed that policy in the 1890s and its leaders began speaking against it. Strauss ran the firm through both decades.

He never married. When he died in San Francisco on September 26, 1902, the business went to four nephews, the surviving sons of David Stern, and an estate of roughly 30 million dollars went with it. He is buried at Home of Peace Cemetery in Colma. The 1906 earthquake destroyed the company records, which is why nobody can say why the number 501 was chosen. Control stayed in the Stern and Haas family until the firm went public in 1971. His product outran him in ways he could not have designed: the Soviet government denounced Levi's as western decadence after the 1957 Moscow youth festival, and the jeans moved for decades on the black market anyway.

Lifespan

15401700180019002030

Levi Strauss's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Levi Strauss & Co. company
Founded in San Francisco as a dry goods importer 1853
US Patent 139,121, riveted work trousers patent
Filed with Jacob Davis, who invented the method. Issued May 20, 1873. 1873
The arcuate back-pocket stitching invention
In continuous use on the company's jeans since that year 1873
Lot 501 invention
The lot number assigned to the copper-riveted waist overall 1890
Twenty-eight scholarships at the University of California other
The gift that became the Levi Strauss Foundation 1897

Life in brief

with age at each point

February 26, 1829 aged 0 Born in Buttenheim, Bavaria, as Löb Strauß
1847 aged ~18 Sails for New York at 18 to join his brothers' dry goods house He worked as an itinerant peddler out of their Liberty Street stock.
January 1853 aged 23 Becomes a United States citizen
March 1854 aged 25 Arrives in San Francisco by way of Panama He lived with his sister Fanny's family and opened the West Coast branch.
1871 aged ~42 Jacob Davis, a Reno tailor and customer, works out the riveted seam
May 20, 1873 aged 44 The rivet patent issues, half assigned to Levi Strauss & Co.
1890 aged ~61 The patent lapses and the waist overall is numbered 501
1897 aged ~68 Endows 28 scholarships at the University of California
September 26, 1902 aged 73 Dies in San Francisco, leaving the firm to four nephews