Jacob “Jake” Levy (1891-1968) was born in Russia to Fishel “Frank” Levy (1868-1955) and Gussie Steinberg Levy (1870-1923). By 1899, the Levy family immigrated from Kobrin, Russia (present-day Belarus) to New York by way of Hamburg, Germany. By 1910, the Levy family had settled in Augusta, Georgia, where Frank Levy supported them as a peddler. In 1917, United States Army drafted Levy to fight in World War I; at the time, he was self-employed as a merchant in Barnwell, South Carolina. He was awarded the Distinguished War Cross in the summer of 1918 in France. In 1920, Levy lived with his parents and worked as a clerk in his father’s mercantile business in Augusta. He married Sadie Steinburg (1896-1989) in the mid-1920s. In 1930, Jacob Levy, his wife, Sadie Steinberg Levy, and their two children, Joel Levy and Theodore Levy lived in Newberry, where Jacob Levy was the proprietor of a clothing goods store that sold men’s wear and shoes. Sometime after the Newberry store was burglarized in 1930, Jacob Levy ceased operations there. The family relocated to Batesburg in Lexington County, where Levy opened another store, also named J. Levy.