Levi Strauss, becoming an American citizen in…

Levi expects that the mining camps will welcome his buttons, scissors, thread and bolts of fabric; additionally, he has yards of canvas sailcloth intended for tent-making and as covers for the Conestoga wagons that dot the landscape next to every stream and river in the area.

Strauss and his brother-in-law David Stern open a dry goods wholesale business called Levi Strauss & Co in March 1853.

Levi, estimated at about 5' 11" and 185 pounds, is often found leading a pack-horse, heavily laden with merchandise, directly into the mining camps found throughout the region.

The story goes that both prospectors and miners, often complaining about the easily torn cotton "britches" and pockets that "split right out" gave Levi the idea to make a rugged overall trouser for the miners to wear.

These are fashioned from bolts of brown canvas sailcloth, with gold ore storage pockets that are nearly impossible to split.

Levi exhausts his original supply of canvas as the demand grows for his hard-wearing overalls, so he switches to a sturdy fabric called serge, made in Nimes, France, by the Andre family.

Originally called serge de Nimes, the name is soon shortened to denim.

Born Löb Strauss in Bavaria, he had emigrated at 14 from Bremerhaven to New York where his two older brothers, Jonas and Louis, had already established a successful wholesale textile and tailoring business.

After a stay of two days in New York, he continued on to the ranch of his uncle, Daniel Goldman in Louisville, Kentucky, where he spent the next five years learning the language and the ways of his new homeland in order that he might someday take over his uncle's ranch.

Löb had dreams of becoming an independent businessman, however, and for several years he walked the roads of Kentucky, selling cloth and notions from the pack on his back.

In 1847, Strauss, his mother and two sisters moved to New York City to join his brothers Jonas and Louis in their dry goods business.