Levi Strauss

Levi Strauss (1829 to 1902) was a German-born American businessman who founded the first company to manufacture blue jeans. Born Loeb Strauss in the Bavarian village of Buttenheim, he emigrated to the United States in 1847 to join his brothers in their New York dry goods business, and in 1853 he moved to San Francisco to open a West Coast branch during the gold rush. His firm of Levi Strauss & Co. imported dry goods and made tents and later jeans, and in 1873 he and the Reno tailor Jacob W. Davis received a patent for strengthening work pants with rivets. Strauss never married. When he died in 1902 his estate was worth about 30 million dollars, and he passed the company to his nephews. He helped found Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco and gave to charity, including an 1897 gift to the University of California, Berkeley that funded scholarships.