Presidential Biographies | Hoover Administration - Early Life

Early Life

On August 10, 1874, Herbert Clark Hoover was born in West Branch, Iowa, a small Quaker settlement about 25 miles from Iowa City. Herbert was the third and last child of Jesse Hoover and Hulda Randall Minthorn Hoover. Jesse was a village blacksmith, then a merchant. Hulda was a lay minister in the Society of Friends (Quakers). In his memoirs, Hoover called her "serious minded, even for a Quaker." Speaking of village life, Hoover recalled: "We ground our own meat and corn at the mill. We slaughtered our own hogs for meat; we wove at least part of our own clothing. . . . We erected our own buildings; we made our own soap."

When young Hoover reached the age of six, his thirty-four year-old father died of heart trouble. At age nine, he saw his mother, who was not quite 36, die of typhoid. Because of these losses, the suddenly orphaned Hoover developed a certain protective shell around him, a detachment that masked a...