Jacob Youphes was born to a Jewish family family in the city of
Riga, in 1831. During this time, he trained and worked as a tailor. In 1854, at the age of 23, he emigrated to the
United States, arriving in
New York City where he changed his name to Jacob Davis. There he ran a tailor's shop before moving to
Maine and then, in 1856,
San Francisco before moving on to
Weaverville. In January 1867, Davis returned to
San Francisco with Annie and his family. Later that year, they moved to
Virginia City, Nevada, where he sold wholesale tobacco and pork before beginning work once more as a tailor. By 1868, the family had moved, this time to
Reno, Nevada, which at that time was a tiny railroad town and there he helped Frederick Hertlein build a
brewery. 1869 saw Davis revert to his original trade, opening a tailor shop in the main street of the town. In December 1870, Davis was asked by a customer to make a pair of strong working pants for her husband who was a
woodcutter. To create suitably robust pants for working, he used
duck cloth and reinforced the weak points in the seams and pockets with the copper rivets. Such was the success of these pants that word spread throughout the
labourers along the railroad. Davis was making these working pants in duck cotton and, as early as 1871, in denim cotton. Before long, he found he could not keep up with demand. Realizing the potential value in his reinforced jeans concept, in 1872, he approached
Levi Strauss, who was still his supplier of fabric, and asked for his
financial backing in the filing of a
patent application. That same year, Davis started sewing a double orange threaded stitched design onto the back pocket of the
jeans to distinguish them from those made by his competitors. By this time, Strauss had set up a sizeable tailor shop in San Francisco for the production of Davis' working pants and Jacob and his family had moved back to San Francisco for Davis to run this shop. As demand continued to grow, the shop was superseded by a
manufacturing plant which Davis managed for Strauss. Davis continued to work there for the remainder of his life, overseeing production of the work pants as well as other lines including work shirts and
overalls. Davis died in San Francisco in 1908. He is buried at
Hills of Eternity Memorial Park in Colma, California. In 2006 a plaque was erected in
Reno, Nevada, outside the premises where Davis's tailor shop was located, to commemorate the fact jeans were invented there. ==See also==