Presidential Biographies | Hoover Administration - Family Life

Family Life

At Stanford, Hoover met Lou Henry, daughter of a Monterey, California, banker and the university's first female engineering graduate. Though he was a Quaker and she was an Episcopalian, they were married by a Roman Catholic priest who was their personal friend in 1899. Tall, lithe, and athletic, Lou was as outgoing as Herbert was introverted. Always more articulate and charming than her husband, Lou Hoover made it her specialty to, in a sense, explain her shy and complicated husband to the outside world. She would forever be protecting his privacy while arranging elaborate formal social affairs that could both display and shield him. The couple had two children, Herbert Clark, Jr. in 1903 and Allan Henry in 1907.