In the mid-1800s, news of gold rushes occurred all throughout Western America. Miners would travel all the from the East, and with the large numbers arriving, towns and small cities started to appear. Small business also started to appear. Some people would sell food, others goods and tools, and others clothing. One such person was 20-year old Levis Strauss.
Loeb Strauss was born in Buttenheim, Bavaria, a province in West Germany on February 26,1829 to Hirsch Strauss and his second wife, Rebecca Haas Strauss. Loeb, who later received the name Levi, had one maternal sister, and four stepbrothers, Jacob, Jonas, Louis, and Mathilde from his father's first wife, who had died a few years earlier. Hirsch later died in 1845 of tuberculosis.
In 1847, Loeb, Rebecca, and Mathilde emigrated to New York, where they met Jonas and Louis, who had already come and had started a dry goods business. Loeb quickly learned the trade from his brothers. By 1850 he was know by his family and friends as "Levi.".
When news of the California Gold Rush came to the east, young Levi decided to head out to San Francisco to make his fortune; not by mining gold, but by selling clothing and goods to the miners who arrived daily in the big city to outfit themselves before heading out for gold. He arrived in 1853, after becoming a US citizen, and the first location of his "wholesale dry goods" was at 90 Sacramento Street, San Francisco. After a few times, he moved to large headquarters, as its trade and reputation expanded, to 14-16 Battery Street, where it remained for more than forty years.
In 1872 Levi received a letter from Jacob Davis, a Nevada tailor and regular customer on better ways to make the "waist overalls," the old name for jeans, with a tough quality cotton called denim. Davis gave this idea to Levi because he did not have enough money to patent the idea. On May 20, 1873, a patent was granted to both men.