Herbert Hoover - Family Background and Early Life

Family Background and Early Life

Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa, the first of his office born in that state or even west of the Mississippi River. His father, Jessie Hoover, was a blacksmith and farm implement store owner, of German (Pfautz, Wehmeyer) and German-Swiss (Huber, Burkhart) descent. Herbert's father and grandfather Eli had moved to Iowa from Ohio twenty years prior. Hoover's mother, Hulda Randall (Minthorn) Hoover (1849–84), was born in Norwich, Ontario, Canada, of English and Irish descent. Both parents were Quakers.

Around age two "Bertie", as he was called, contracted a serious bout of croup, and was momentarily thought to have died until resuscitated by his uncle Dr. John Minthorn. As a young child he was often referred to by his father as "my little stick in the mud" when he repeatedly got trapped in the mud crossing the unpaved street. Herbert's family figured prominently in the town's public prayer life, due almost entirely to mother Hulda's role in the church. His father, noted by the local paper for his "pleasant, sunshiny disposition", died in 1880; after working admirably to retire her husband's debts, retain their life insurance and care for the children, his mother followed in 1884, leaving Hoover an orphan at the age of nine. Fellow Quaker Lawrie Tatum was appointed as Hoover's guardian.

After a brief stay with one of his grandmothers in Kingsley, Iowa, Hoover lived the next 18 months with his uncle Allen Hoover in West Branch. In November 1885 he went to Newberg, Oregon, to live with his uncle Dr. John Minthorn, physician and businessman whose own son had died the year before. The Minthorn household was considered cultured and educational, and imparted a strong work ethic. For two and a half years, Hoover attended Friends Pacific Academy (now George Fox University), and then worked as an office assistant in his uncle's real estate office, the Oregon Land Company, in Salem, Oregon. Though he did not attend high school, Hoover attended night school and learned bookkeeping, typing and mathematics.

Hoover entered Stanford University in 1891, its inaugural year, after flunking all the entrance exams (except mathematics) and then being tutored for the summer in Palo Alto. The first-year students were not required to pay tuition. Hoover claimed to be the very first student at Stanford, by virtue of having been the first person in the first class to sleep in the dormitory. While at the university, he was the student manager of both the baseball and football teams and was a part of the inaugural Big Game versus rival University of California (Stanford won). Hoover graduated in 1895 with a degree in geology. He earned his way through four years of college working at various jobs on and off campus, including the Arkansas and United States Geological Survey. Throughout his tenure at Stanford he was adamantly opposed to the fraternity system.