years. life ines his early germany, his move to new york, and then on to california. his long career and his contributions to the san francisco community in his later years. using historic photographs and , thetising materials presentation also explores how bluejeans transformed with fashion trends. the 19th century to today. this 70-minute event is held by the california historical society in san francisco. >> it is my honor to introduce one of my favorite people, lynn downey, to talk about her book " levi strauss, the man who gave bluejeans to the world." welcome, lynn. [applause]

lynn: i'm going to spend a little time tonight talking to you about the man i have spent over 25 years of my life with. hopefully, by the end of the evening, you will understand why. i was hired as the very first historian archivist in 1989. when i walked down the door, i was not too surprised that there weren't any historical records because of this. this is a picture of the company 1906,arters april 20, after the building had survived the massive earthquake, but not the fire. it is not a usual. you are for a company in san francisco that was founded before the earthquake, you are not going to have much. but i did not understand the impact it would have on my work. so i'm the first historian archivist ever hired. so it was really important for me to get up and running and

understand history right away. so i started reading published histories of the company, newspaper articles, interviews with company managers, going years., 60, 70 i read some interesting stories that contradict themselves occasionally. but the basic story was that levi strauss arrived in san francisco in 1850 clipper ship and some miners walking around san francisco with reggae pants and he decided to make a pair of pants out of canvas. later died them blue or got the fabric from france -- depending on who wrote the story. in a later, he put some rivets in them and then they were genes. all are -- they were jeans. all right, the more i kept reading the materials that survived, i realize that the stories had been made up. and guess it made them up? the company. bless their little pointed heads. they really tried. they really tried to tell the

history, but they didn't have anything to work with. the stories arose during the time of world war ii and there is a lot of competition in the denim world and the company needed a powerful origin story about the genes. they made assumptions based on what they had and we were left ribbed50 clipper ships, pockets, denim from france. although i have to say my favorite story about the origin of the company was the 11 sunday times, which said the company clauden founded by levi-strauss, the french anthropologist. [laughter] it took my entire time, mostly five years to track down the story because there were no records and i really did have to this story.nd and in between my regular duties, that is what i would do, ferret out information about this man. so i found is actually a person who was so much more interesting than the mythology. he was sort of a cardboard cutout.

in our town, san francisco, he was this cardboard cutout. when i found a person more interesting, more complicated than anybody i could have imagined. let's start with his beginning. strauss figureb 26, 1829 in guggenheim -- buttenheim. and tell theme that you know they are frank onions, they will love you buy you a beer. they are frankonians, they will love you and buy you a beer. the seconder was wife. he had five older half siblings. then he and his sister fanny were the son and daughter of the second wife. he grew up going to a tiny synagogue in guggenheim and

going -- guggenheim and going to school. was livingitizen under a law passed in 1813 that was intended to make a proper citizens out of the various jews, but really just took away so many rights. but one of the things that was done to do this was every village come after the date when into effect, had to have a list that was the list of every citizen in every town. it had very specific rules. were listedhat could marry or change their residence within the boundaries of the kingdom. in addition, the right to marry was limited to the eldest son of the -- the family. a younger son could marry only if a childless couple gave up a spot on the list for him. if he married a widow, who also was on the list, or if he left his village and married in another or if a place on the

list opened up -- basically, it was about the list. if you were a younger son, you couldn't marry. there were a lot of unsanctioned unions and illegitimate births in a lot of these very small towns in bavaria. the other bigger problem was that they did not allow jews to continue their traditional occupations. pddling, cattle trading -- cattle trading. was? --lder strauss boy was jacob. likeuld not be a peddler his dad. the other boys in the house had no opportunities whatsoever. got 18 people in guttenheim up and left the three of them were of the strauss family.

three years later, the two other boys went to america. litmann became jonas and who became lewis. they went to new york and became prosperous and sent letters home to how good things are in new york. in 1846, here strauss dies of tuberculosis. his wife rebecca has a decision to make. childreneard own two and her youngest stepdaughter. she makes the important and necessary decision to go to america. if you wanted to leave the very and go to america, you could get up and leave. you had to apply to the bavarian government and tell them what he wanted to leave and you had to make sure you had to tell them why without insulting the bavarian government at the same time. [laughter] and thanks to the record-keeping in the state archives, we have the statement that levi strauss himself wrote to explain the reasons why he was leaving along with his mother.

it's really very poignant. the favorable news that i have received from my stepbrothers in america has convinced me to follow them, even though i do not have at this time a specific occupation. but my brothers will take care of that. no members of my family will stay behind. i will share the fate that has been assigned to me with them in foreign lands. i just joined my mother in her plea. here, juste a career like my brothers. this is very important because if you left bavaria, you had to leave my behind so that if he struck out in america or london and came back home, you are not a burden on the state. so between spring and autumn of 1848, rebecca strauss and her three children that on a ship and went off for new york. you can read in the book about

the passage that you have to take to get to new york. and then they were very happy to finally land. where's my technology? in new york city. take to get to new york. they move into an area that is basically today the lower east side of new york. there were christian and jewish people from germany. they move in with lewis and jonas strauss who were urban peddlers. they have store accounts and they would get stuff wholesale and other own store accounts and walk around new york and they were basically urban paddlers. their business was called j. strauss. levi johnson starts learning the business and he is learning english. and in the census taker comes around in 1850 and takes the names of everyone in the household. there is someone named levi because he changed his name for number of reasons.

the most important of which was nobody in america could pronounce loeb. plus, levi is the name --is a name in the bible. it seemed like an appropriate name to take. then the gold rush happened and all of these reports are coming back, and so many jewish merchants are coming up to san francisco and all the little towns in setting up retail stores. they are writing their families back home saying, come out to california. opportunities out here are amazing. if you wanted to calm to california, you could be the wholesaler and stay in san francisco and bring in the goods from new york and have your retail accounts back and gold rush country, or you could have your small retail stores of there. it was this amazing umbilical cord between san francisco and the gold country.

sometime in 1852, the strauss family decided to send levi to california to open up the west coast branch. there is still some a questions about levi that will never be answered unless somebody find a diary or a letter in a truck somewhere. did he jump or was he pushed? did he want to go? did he think it was a great idea, or did the family say, guess what? you are getting on the boat. but yet something important to do before he could leave. on january 31, 1853, he became an american citizen. five days later, he was on a steamer. there are many ways to get to san francisco. the fastest was to cross panama. you took a steamer from new york

to the caribbean side. depending on what time of year you were there, you rented a mule, and you took the guilt of panama city on the pacific side, and got another steamship up to san francisco, which is what levi did. he turned 24 years old on the trip up. he landed here on march 14, 1853. he was a very serious young man. again, records are scarce, but i am almost most positive that he arrived in california but letters of introduction from merchants in new york that he could take up to the gold rush

country to a store saying -- i would like to introduce you from to levi strauss. he probably also arranged to have a warehouse to the waterfront to store the good his brothers had only put in a clever ship going around the horn. it is very likely he slept in that warehouse. i found a lot of letters and diaries and newspaper accounts of young merchants sleeping in their warehouses on a mattress and blanket or the fleas don't let me sleep. one of the very first customers that we know of that levi found was the store pardon and kennedy near auburn. this is the collection of dry goods that his brothers would send him -- pants, shirts, children's clothing. dry goods was anything that was not hardwood or food. -- hardware or food. it was the soft goods of everyday living. he cultivated all these clients and started this web beginning

in california that kept on going. one of the things we know the least about is levi strauss' faith. we know that he was jewish and worship at temple emmanuelle. i would love to know on sabbath day if he was sitting in a pew next to norton. by the 1890's, levi was on the advisory board for women's personal service. that is all we know. we don't know his personal feelings about his faith, but we will find out what he practiced the reflected his faith. when the civil war came to california, levi was a neighbor was a lincoln republican. he voted for lincoln.

he joined something called the committee of 84 looking for conspiracies against the union. there was a reason for that because there were a lot of southern advisors in california and san francisco. levi strauss prospered during the civil war because eastern american ports were blockaded. dry goods were able to get to great britain and make a lot of money during the civil war. so, he did prosper and he did do well. in the mid to late 1850's, his sister and her husband and her children moved from new york to san francisco to live with levi. he was alone for the first three years that he left here. by 1867, the company was in its

headquarters. that picture that we saw of the building -- this is what it looked like before the earthquake and fire. it was on battery between pine and california, i believe. a beautiful, beautiful building. they started off with just -- they basically had the entire block. the company had been just levi strauss. by 1863, it was levi strauss and co. his sister mary had passed away. it was really becoming a family business. now, it was easy to make money in san francisco, but it was also easy to lose it. what levi did was put gold, called treasure, my favorite historical work, onto steamships that were carted on another

steamer to go up to new york, and he sent the gold to his brothers to buy more dry goods. the company had $76,000 in gold on this boat that went down in a hurricane off of south carolina in september of 1857. that is about $2 million of value today. some people found that boat in the 1980's. in the early 80's, they found a pair of pants in the trunk. it is very likely the company to get an insurance payment. they were good about making sure a lot of the shipments were insured. levi had a pretty good sales set up by the 1870's. here they are.

none of them wearing levi's because they were not invented yet, but they were probably wearing denim. what was interesting was that levi had dry goods customers in mexico, canada, and hawaii in the late 1860's and early 1870's. he understood the value of the pacific rim. so he thinks, i am going to be a wholesaler of the rest of my life, i'm prosperous, my family is growing, my sister and her husband are having more kids, the business is doing great. i am a happy capitalist. that is what he thought he would do for the rest of his life until 1872, when he got a letter from this guy. this guy is jacob davis. born in latvia -- it was russia at the time.

he came to the united states in 1854. he was trained as a tailor. he came to california in late 1854 and decided to try the whole gold mining thing, and it did not work. he changed his name to davis by this time. he went all over the place, and by the mid-1860's, he was up in canada, got married, started to have a family, ran a brewery -- ran a brewery. in 1867, he was in virginia city, one of the hubs of the mining regions. he described it as a population of 15,000 people of which 5000 were miners, 5000 were gamblers and prostitutes, and 5000 were businessmen, speculators, and -- capitalists in 1860, he moved to reno after reno had been established. it was clustered around the

central pacific railroad. local businesses supported mining and agriculture. he set up there as a tailor. he had the reno brewery for a while. he went to the east and did some tailoring. even tried store keeping for a while, but he always came back to reno. by this time, he was making tent covers, horse blankets, and wagon covers. in december a woman walked into his tailoring shop and asked him to make her pants for her husband. he sends her instructions -- he gives her a string to send back with her to measure her husband. he was working with a fabric

that comes from the dutch for canvas. it is pretty sturdy stuff, kind of off-white. over on the table, he had horse blankets. he used to reinforce the scenes -- seams and stress points of the blankets with ribbons. he looks up and says, i wonder if i could put rivtes in these pants? he did. he gives them to the woman. he sees the guy walking around town wearing his pants and the guy was really happy, and people started hearing about these pants. people were coming in to buy more, so he decided, he has a big moneymaking idea.

he was a frustrated inventer. he had a patent on a type of clothes press already. he wanted to mass market these pants. a lot of the fabric he had at his shop he got from levi strauss. one of his wife's cousin came back with duck and thread. he knew the name levi strauss. he had this moneymaking idea and since examples of the pants down to levi with a letter that says here is a big moneymaking idea. let's be partners and do this together. well, that shows a lot of trust, you have to admit. what would have prevented levi from running off with the idea? but he knew levi's reputation and knew he would not do that. he also knew that levi was not

a manufacturer, but thought big. he was an idea guy. in the documents and copies in the national archives in philadelphia, there is his handwritten note, right to this guy. the patent was awarded. the patent was awarded after three tries on may 20, 1873 for an improvement of fastening pocket openings, which is really boring language for the invention of the blue jean. it gets pretty exciting right off the bat. there is a magazine published at a san francisco called "pacific rural press." the kind of people who would wear really tough, riveted pants

and he had an article about the pants in one of their issues. i want to read you a little bit of it. we are sure it is going to be popular which are working men. nothing looks more slouchy to see a man with his pockets hanging down and no other part of the clothing is apt to be torn and ripped like the pockets. besides its slouchy appearance, -- i don't think the men think their pants look slouchy. there would be no more slouchy since they would have rivets in them. this is a picture of the oldest pair of jeans in the archives.

these are the oldest jeans in the archives that are blue denim. blue denim has one of those weird histories. no one knows the real story. denim was created first in france in the 17th century and it was a type of weave. by the time in the textile and factors were making it, they were calling it -- even though you have a english fabric and give it a good french name, it is good marketing. but then the anglo sized the work to denim. by the 18th century, it was always in english denim and it was always cotton. in the beginning, it was a wool and silk blend.

there are people who say levi at got the denim from france for his first jeans. and they say, no, the first jeans were made of denim and the denim came from manchester, new hampshire. yeah. it was the biggest textile mill in the country and they make the very best denim. they were so huge. they had their own foundry and when they cannot get enough cotton during the civil war, the converted their foundry and made gun and fire engines. they did make the very best of them in the united states. there were no textile mills and california. levi had to go all the way to manchester, new hampshire. so, they have to find a place to set up shop. the company did not own any manufacturing space until the 1880's. this is 1873, so the least a market street and had to advertise for women to sew the pants.

they were very much in favor of them being women. this was a typical ad in the san francisco chronicle. wanted -- 51st-class female sewing machine operators who can bring their own machines with them. employment at 415 market st upstairs. i read this and thought, i had this image of these poor women dragging these machines up market street, but they were very small and portable at this time, and apparently not unusual for women to take them around with them. eventually, the company did get some sewing machines of the women didn't have to bring our own. they got lots of answers to the ad, and i believe by the 1880's,

there was the company's owned and operated factory around the corner. levi had brought jacob davis from reno to be in charge of the manufacturing and levi stayed with the dry goods, which is what he knew. jacob was in charge. jacob and his family lived on. folsom street. he became a levi strauss and company employee. they knew how to have a good time. this is an employee picnic on angel island about 1899. so, these pants are called overalls because in the old days, that is what working pants were called. if you wanted bib overalls, you had to ask for those specifically. if you asked for waste overalls, you got what we today call blue jeans. this was pure work wear. this 19th century and was really

tough. so, among the early consumers were of course, cowboys. that state as a classic consumer for a very long time. miners of course, there were still a lot of gold and silver being found in the west until the 1920's. old pairs of levi's were found in mines. we know the pants date into the 1920's. that is how long mining was going on. and agricultural workers. i believe this is near elk grove and sacramento. there was one very important person who never wore appear blue jeans in his life. [laughter] and that was levi strauss. it would be completely inappropriate for him to wear jeans. he was not a laborer. he was a wealthy businessman, capitalist. he wore a black suit with a silk tie and carried a top hat.

i stake my reputation in my pension on the fact that levi strauss never wore appear blue jeans in his life. in 2006, the city of reno dedicated a plaque on virginia street in reno, which is where jacob davis had had his kingdom and shop. -- his tailoring shop. in 1873, levi bought the building from jacob so he could have enough money to move to san francisco. in 1875, he sold it back to jacob davis for one dollar and jacob davis sold it again. jacob made a tidy sum on that property, which was identified by the reno historical commission. i was very happy to have joined the plaque ceremony. the oldest pair of jeans to

earlier is priceless, but the insurance value was $150,000 is in that case i am holding. i told them i would come with the security. this is my security. [laughter] wyatt earp, fully armed, yes. they had a lot of fun driving me to the reception afterwards. they were saying, we could take the jeans and leave her out in the desert. [laughter] that was a fun day. manufacturing is going on in the company was making a lot of flyers for the salespeople to give to potential clients. a lot of them were seen something called home industry, 19th-century code that they only hired white women and girls. this is one of the pieces of levi history that is classic and standard for san francisco history that i have the pleasure to talk about because that is how they told me to write this book is that levi strauss did not hire chinese in his factory

because discrimination in san francisco was about the chinese. the railroad had been completed in 1869 and there were no more jobs. white men and chinese men were coming into san francisco to look for jobs that there was hateful rhetoric, violence, and people do not want their photos -- clothes made by chinese who lived in that strange place called chinatown and eight weird food. the rhetoric at the time was truly horrendous. some of it ended up -- this was a priceless that would have gone to a retail store manufactured by white labor. there is quite a few of those. for a while, it was stamped inside the pocket of the jeans. it was a selling point. it was a point of pride or the company. i don't know how levi strauss personally felt about the chinese, but as a businessman, he knew there was no way he could sell his product and keep his business unless he adhered to the prevailing prejudice.

we do not like it, but it is real. that is who he was. one of the reasons that i find him so fascinating is because he is not predictable, and he's complicated, and maybe he may not have been very easy to like. that is why he was so interesting to me. by the 1870's, the company was getting government contracts for its dry goods. they would bid with the state to supply the dry goods for a variety of state-funded organizations. one of them was the bureau of prisons. so, for years, 1870's into the 1880's, levi straus and company had the san quentin prison, full some prison. this is the actual language from one of the contracts that said levi strauss and company won the

bid for convict suitsf at folsom prison. levi strauss and company products were sold to prisons, but some of levi's customers should have been in prison. and i want to tell you a little story. there was very well-known retailers in arizona by the 1880's. michael and joseph moved to america and change their name to goldwater and had stores all kinds of businesses all over arizona. and joseph came to san francisco quite a bit to do the shopping for the stores at all of the store wholesale houses. and levi strauss and company was a goldwater's customer. in 1881, the newspapers were all

a twitter because joseph goldwater suddenly of the land of the rattlesnake tarantula. goldwater had made extensive purchases on credit by the biggest firms in san francisco including levi strauss and company. he hightailed it back to arizona unwilling to pay for the goods. he turns things over to a partner in yuma and tells everybody, i am not paying. all of the wholesale merchants in san francisco called the u.s. marshal. the u.s. marshal and a few other lawmen to yuma to either retrieve the goods or rest goldwater and his partner. the sacramento daily record union reported, the defendants have men barricaded on the premises, armed with shotguns and declared they would resist at all hazards. the marshall said that he will serve the process regardless of the consequences. if resistance is offered by the

mob, there will surely be bloodshed. it is a john wayne movie. so what happens? a marshall shows up in yuma, they are barricaded, and they arrest joseph goldwater and bring him back to san francisco, and they quietly make a little settlement for a few pennies on the dollar for what they owed. the incident just faded away. the goldwater's remained in the retail business in arizona and joseph's great-nephew became a u.s. senator. in 1964, he ran for president, and what was his name? exactly. these are very interesting people to work with, believe me. and levi, i hope he had a good time with that story. this is where we go back to how he is expressing his faith. that was goldwater.

i think it is in phoenix. so, about a year after levi arrived in san francisco, he made his first terrible -- charitable contribution, five dollars, to an orphan asylum society. it is in the sunset district and still in business. that was the beginning of a lifelong process of philanthropy that was personally important to him, and very much a tenant of his jewish faith. it is really easy to track his giving because a lot of it showed up in the newspapers. there are personal donations he made in corporate donations, and when i evaluated where his money went, you can see that a lot of money went to take care of young people and educate young people. in 1896, he began an association with the university of california at berkeley.

he and some other men gave money to the university in 1896 to light the pathways on the campus and to put lights in the library so that students could stay later and study. then he heard in 1897, that the california state assembly had authorized scholarships for every single -- there were 35 assembly districts in california at that time, and it was a scholarship from one student for every assembly district, which could be a huge piece of geography. levi wrote to the regent, the head of the regions of the university of california berkeley, and said, i would like to match those scholarships. i would like to match that money for every simply district in california. and of course, the regions accepted his offer and created the levi strauss scholarship, which was first awarded to 21

students, half of which were women, in 1898. that scholarship is still in place today at uc berkeley. i have a great honor of meeting the latest crop of the levi strauss scholars the year before i retired. it is still on the books and still maintained by the family. it is quite wonderful. so, he is becoming this wonderful philanthropist. but the businesses keep on going. and he and a lot of his managers know that when you have a patent on something -- they had a patent on the process of wearing riveted clothing. eventually, inventions have to benefit the public domain, so they knew in 1892, that patent would run out and anyone to start making riveted clothing. as we get closer and closer to the 1890's, the company started branding the product. so they knew in 1992, that

in 1892 patent was going to run out, and anyone that wanted could make riveted clothing, oh my god. as we get closer and closer to the 1890's, the company started basically branding the product. in 1886 m of the famous two horse poll, we don't know if it -- not everybody in the american west was rich. not everyone in the american west spoke english as their first language. if you go into a store and there is a competitor's product, and you don't speaking with were read, you can say, i want the one with the horses. you point to the picture of the brand that you want. it is smart marketing, and fairly common. the product was called the two-horse brand until 1927 when they registered the name levi so it was not generic likely next. forever, it was the two horse brand. we don't have a lot of images -- they might call him uncle levi. a lot of them did survive the fire.

they came from family members whose belongings to not go up in flames. one of the other problems is he died in his nephews house on leavenworth street at gary, which also went down in the fire. anything personal in that family home that was his also was lost. that was part of the problem, corporate records and personal records. this is one of the very few. in about 1890, the company started to assign three digit slot numbers to its products. that is when we first see, 1890 or 1892, this famous 501. this is one of my drink the dinner, people would tell me, i know the number 501 -- no, you don't. nobody knows. i have theories. there were numbers, and the company had its own manufactured products, everything got a three digit number.

it sort of describes -- the first pants were just called xx, double x overalls. competition is coming in. there was desire we would make it easy for retailers to order stuff, give everything a number. no one knows that his number came from. my favorite reason -- my favorite literally published explanation for this was some book. the reason they were called 501 is because they had 500 rivets on them. [laughter] lynn downey: try walking in a pair of pants with 500 rivets and don't go out in the sun come up because they will heat up as you know. copper conducting. so nobody knows. there is also the mythology, the very famous double arch of stitching on the back of the pockets which they call the arcuate, like a bow and arrow. so when i first started with the company, i kept reading all of these explanations. it is the wing spread of a bird, it is this and this. nobody knows.

but someone in the company said, it references the wing spread of the rocky mountains eagle. ok, the rocky mountains are not in california. there is no such bird as the rocky mountain eagle, and number three, nobody knows, so stop saying it. it is still out there. i am fighting cyberspace. i can find public newspapers with this, it was ok. now i am fighting cyberspace. that is one of the things i wrote the book. stop saying these things. so the company started making these beautiful handbills for their salesman to take to potential retailers. that imagery, branding, give you a picture to help you understand the product kind of thing. this shows a variety of different products and men, or children, that could wear the products. the flipside of this has all the wonderful language about the

strength of the product, the original blah blah blah. any retailer would have both of what you needed, visual branding and the actual language. there was newspaper advertising and the bodie career and funky's newspaper all around the west, really interesting visual display as well, strong and durable, great language. and then my personal favorite. [laughter] lynn downey: this tells you everything you need to know about how strong your pants are. there is language. there is information. there is a two horse, then there is the guy. whose face is that? that is levi strauss' face. this tells me the man had a sense of humor, and he didn't mind being caricatured for his business. i just absolutely loved it.

not because of the coppertone ad. i just love this because of his face. it goes along with other stories i found and letters people had written to the company early in the century that his employees called him levi, not mr. strauss. his customers called him levi. he did not have this distance between people that wore jeans or not. he appeared to be a truly personal and guy with a great sense of humor. one think is modern, you go by something, you get a gift with purchase -- that goes back a really long way. this gift was purchased. the flipside in 1899, a calendar. these were created for the company retailers. if you bought a levi product, you were given this lovely the calendar printed for free, the name of your friendly retailer,

so you remember where you got it. they also created trade cards. every consumer product company america made trade cards. they were like business cards, but people collected them like baseball cards and they would paste them into scrapbooks. they created some with miners on them, engineers -- there was a little bit of language on the back, the retailer's name printed for free. you bought a levi product, you got a levi trade card. by the late 1880's, 1890's, here is the battery street. they are taking over the whole building. the levi strauss sign was so huge. you saw pictures there forever.

and that this is actually from the 1900s, the uc berkeley your book. it was called our benefactor. there is levi on the left near hearst, which is interesting. the first recipients of the levi strauss fellowship surprised levi at his home one night. he happened to be visited by jacob ryan stein and hearst that night. the students all troops in, all 21, and presented him with a plaque, thanking him for the scholarship that had enabled all of them to go to college, which of course was lost in the flames. here he is near the end of his life. the happy philanthropist, the happy capitalist. levi never married. he moved in with his sister fanny and her family when he was in his early 40's. then she passed away, and he lived with his older nephew, jacob started, and that was his house he was living in that went down in 1906.

this was in everton. he was probably visiting family friends. they all look tired. let's go take a picture by the tree. one of the few that we have. in 1900, levi strauss had left almost 50 years earlier. he heard the cemetery in his home village in buttenheim was falling apart, and the town fathers want to do we service is. they wanted to refurbish it. they did not have enough money. he spent half the amount of money needed to renovate the cemetery in his home village. they were able to do it. he had not lived there for almost 50 years. he had almost never been back. he somehow kept in touch with people in buttenheim. this is his father's friend, which i visited in 2007.

his father was there, his grandparents, his family, no one else as you saw and heard in his statements, no one remained in guggenheim, but it was important that his family's graves taken care of. that was very poignant. he died the 26th, 1902. he was 73 years old. he had not felt good for several days. he went to bed and never woke up. the funeral was held at his home. the rabbi of temple emanuel gave the eulogy here they had a special train to go down to coma to close the business for the day and employees could come to the funeral. and all of the language from the eulogy -- people always see nice things about the eulogy, but i have a feeling everything was true.

everything was sincere. there were so many obituaries and articles about him that it just seemed to echo everything the rabbi had said that makes me feel it was very true. so the earthquake and fire happened, building goes down. he left the business to four nephews. he had four nephews and three nieces. he left the majority of business to the nephews. he left lots of money to orphanages, mostly orphanages, and what were called benevolent organizations. these were mostly for the jewish indigent, widows and orphans who could not take care of themselves. there was the first hebrew benevolent society. he left a lot of money. each niece got $25,000, and the bulk of his business to these

four nephews. his estate was valued at $6 million, and that is 1902. the four nephews did not have to work. they were incredibly wealthy. they had real estate. the graph skated on money rest of their lives, but they rebuilt the company. they built the building on the very same place. where else are you going to go in san francisco? 98 battery. it is still there, at the corner of pine. the company was there until the 1970's when they went to embarcadero center. so the brothers kept my company name. they could have started over and say, now we are stern brothers. it was levi strauss and co. again. the family that owns the company is the odds family. i'm sure everyone has heard of them, who knows how they are related. i will give you the family tree.

one of levi strauss' nephews was sigmund stern. that was his nephew. he and his wife had a daughter named elyse. it is his descendents that only company today. his grandson, half, the adorable child on the right, is the man who hired me as historian. he is the reason i call levi uncle levi because he is the great-great-grand nephew. jacob davis sold his interest in the patent back to the company around 1906, and he died in 1908. his son simon worked for levi for 20 years, that he left and started his own clothing business, which did not do well. in 1935, he opened another business named after his son, which is still in business today, ben davis. they were a clothing company with a little guerrilla. ben davis, jacob davis' grandson. they are still in business

today. so levi's plaza was opened in 1982, where the archives is, and it is still a mainstay of san francisco, right on battery street. if you have ever been there, there is a beautiful fountain, and the remains of a gold rust ship underneath. whenever excavating levi's plaza, the american museum came across the remains of the gold ship and were able to do an amazing study of what was there. the company still operates today. in buttenheim, 1998, the city was able to figure out which house levi strauss had been born in, and it was still there. the city bought the house and turned it into a museum, and is the levi strauss museum.

it is a wonderful place. it is about this big. it is a wonderful village full of breweries and fascinating people. they hired a tremendous young woman to be the director. she is the reason i was able to go to the state archives. she is the one who found so much of the german occupation about levi's life translated for me. that is the reason we have a story from his early years. it is a lovely, lovely place. i insist you go. fly into nuremberg, you get a car, and you go. call tonya. it is truly a lovely place. so many biographers, when they spend their lives or years and years with a subject, sometimes they get to the end of their book and they are like, i have sick of this person. that never happened to me. that never happened to me at all working on this book.

the reason is because of something i said earlier. levi was so complicated. he was not that cardboard cutout. with a true philanthropist, and he was a hardass. you either pay your bill or give you back the stuff. he was so contradictory. he wasn't boring. he was so fascinating to me as a subject for a book, why i just continually was fascinated, everything i found out about him added to the amazing story. earlier in my career, i met a gentleman, dr. john michael, who is the great-grandson of jonas strauss, levi's oldest brother. their family does have a photo that they were not living in san francisco during the earthquake and fire, they were able to save it. he has always let a use this picture at the end of my talk.

i absolutely adore this picture. it is the only one we really see him smiling. he has a cigar, he has a pantomime at, and i just love this picture. i hope that he was as happy as he looks near the end of his life. in 1960, some very smart person at levi strauss and co. interviewed people. they interviewed people who worked with him when he was still alive. they talked to a sewing machine operator and said, what was levi like? she said, he was tough but a fine fellow. thank you. [applause] lynn downey: thank you very much. i am happy to answer questions. you can stand at the mic or you won't end up on the footage.

you can raise your hand and walk on over. >> hi there. i grew up in fishersville, pennsylvania. my parents had brought a home from a previous mill. our home had been the superintendent of the mill's home. i knew this mill very well. it was like my playground. it does not operate now. it had been through all reports a manufacturer of kentucky jeans for civil war veterans. in other words, how does this predate levi strauss come into this picture? lynn downey: i am glad you asked the question. the word jean and jeans is one of the archives wrestling things. there was a fabric called jeans, which was being made at the same time as denim.

it was indigo blue light denim. it was easily absorbed by the cotton, the color that everybody liked, whatever. pants made of jean fabric were called jeans, and kentucky jeans was a very specific type of pants. it originally was made in kentucky, but it was one of those things -- everybody knew what kentucky jeans were, and they were made in other places but not always in kentucky, but it was made of jean fabric. denim is one white and one colored together. jeans was two of the same color. it looks like denim, but denim will have that white, the phil will come through a little bit. jean fabric was just blue. jeans -- levi strauss had sold jean pants in his dry good inventory before the denim. here is what we called jeans today. men have worn on riveted denim

pants when they were denim overalls. when levi strauss created rivets, it was a new category of work where, which is the blue jeans, but they were called overalls until the 1950's. teenage boys who thought marlon brando wearing 501 jeans in movies with scary motorcycle guys, they wanted to be like him and where those pants here the dads told them overalls, so they started telling them jeans. they did not want to wear overalls like their dads. it had to be cool like merlin brando. i don't know why they appropriated that word, but it was the new word. it was the new word for the pants. it was a new, modern word for something that had been around since the 1870's. kentucky jeans were pants made out of jean fabric. i know it is very confusing. [laughter] lynn downey: i try to cover it in the book, but i don't how successful i was. who else?

oh, come on. the microphone. >> i am very curious to know why he never married. did you find any evidence of a relationship ever in germany, here, was he just married to his job? what is the story? lynn downey: he gave a number of interviews in which he said his life was his business, but we have no letters, no diaries. everybody always asks me that question. we don't know if he was gay. we don't know. the one thing about history is that you never know. next front home i.t. someone that said i found a diary, i found some letters, but because so much of the personal stuff is gone, we don't know. the fact he moved in with his sister tells me he never had any intention to. and he was sent out here in his 20's to be the west coast branch of the business.

he had to build the business to support his family in new york. he might have had so much on his shoulders that he decided his wife was his business. that is the only quote i found that comes close to explaining it. unless we find the records, we will never know. come on up. >> i was wondering about the history of the factory on valencia street. lynn downey: yes, the valencia street factory was built in 1906 after the fremont street factory went down in the earthquake and fire. it was put up very quickly. it opened in november 1906, and it was a working factory, still working factory when i started in 1989. it was turned over to laboratories, laundries, experimentation. they were still making 501 jeans the japanese market into the early 1990's, but it became too expensive to manufacture out of

the property. in 2008, i believe, the company sold the building to the san francisco school, and they gave the money to the redevelopment fund. it went back to the district. at the school, the renovated the building, but they kept the soul of the building. they were used a lot of the materials on the inside for staircases. a lot of their benches. they recycle to the interior. it had lots of long hallways. it was perfect for a class. it retained the wonderful soul of the factory. >> how did you find the oldest pair of jeans? lynn downey: how did i find the oldest pair of jeans? somebody called me on the phone. in 25 years, one of my jobs was to shop, spend the company's money on really old jeans read i didn't have to go anywhere to do it.

when people knew the company was buying vintage products, it just showed up. it was a private dealer, who always wanted to remain anonymous. he sold it to the company. it was somebody who found them. people rarely told me where they found the old jeans because they did not want anyone going where there might be more. as a historian, it makes me crazy. i think we knew the provenance or maybe two or three of the early pieces of denim in the archives, but they would come out of barns and cellars and mines, and trunks. >> two questions. i am curious about the timeline with some of the changes were made like that rivet at the

bottom of the fly, the back pocket, and the second question would be the trunk they found, what those ended up selling for. lynn downey: i don't know the answer to the second question because i don't work at the company and don't know. the changes of the jeans went over time. because of changes in fashion and wanting to modernize what the jeans were. the rivets on the back pockets were always on the outside, but in the 1920's and 1930's, the company was getting the plane saying the rivets are scratching our saddles. so what the company did was put the rivets in the pockets, but sew the pockets over. they were taken out completely in 1967. there was a rivet at the ace of the button fly, the indelicate named crotch rivet.

when we camp at the campfire -- [laughter] it is a really delicate place. the company was like, what a bunch of whimpy cowboys. world war ii started, and american clothing manufacturers had to take a certain amount of metal off of their clothing. so nobody likes this rivet, we have to get rid of it. it never came back until the company started to make replicas of its historic jeans again. don't crouch in front of a campfire. those changes were changes in fashion, wartime, whatever. always because of necessity. no more questions? well, thank you so much for coming out. i really appreciate it. [applause]

lynn downey: i guess we are going to sign some books. >> thanks, everybody. you can buy your books at the front desk if you like. membership, it is 20% off tonight as well. thank you for coming. and thank you, lynn. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] you are watching american history tv. to join the conversation, watch us on facebook, at c-span history. president were a greatest leaders. it sees been recently asked historians to rate our 45 presidents in 10 areas of leadership. to theg this year went

president who preserved the union abraham lincoln. he has held the top spot for all three east -- c-span historical surveys. to keepre continue their position. dwight eisenhower who served in 1953 to 1961 makes his first appearance in the c-span top five position this year. choices,out the top 10 harry truman, thomas jefferson, jfk, ronald reagan. jumps up one spot this year to return to the top 10. rightames buchanan, he is that last in all three c-span surveys. there is bad news for andrew jackson. our seventh president found his overall rating dropping this year from number 13 to number 18. survey had good news for outgoing president obama, for

the first time on the list he was placed at number 12 overall. george w. bush moved up three spots. with a big game in public persuasion and relations with congress. how did our historians rank your favorite president? who are the winners and losers in each of the 10 categories, you can find all of his on more at our website at sees and.org. >> the democratic congressman represents silicon valley. monday night, he will describe the issues that matter most to the tech companies, their frustration with washington, and his goal to create more jobs through the companies in his district which include apple and tesla among others. he is interviewed by the technology reporter. >> we have to figure out the credentialing for the shops available. not everything will require a four-year degree.

i'm not as concerned about folks getting for your degrees or phd's. but what are you doing after high school that will get you a credential that will get you a job? i think the federal government should be looking to credentials that relate to employment and having conversations and funding those types of programs. >> watch "the communicators" monday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. >> each week, american history artifacts" visits museums and historic places. next, we travel to richmond, virginia, to learn about the history of the state capitol building modeled after a roman temple in southern france and first used in 1792. hour tour guide is the capitol historian, mark greenough.