Herbert Hoover Facts | 31st US PRESIDENT
US President: 1929-1933
US Vice President: Charles Curtis
Political Party: Republican
Birth: August 10, 1874 at West Branch, Iowa
Death: October 20, 1964 (aged 90) at New York City, New York
Education: Stanford University
Offices held:
31st President of the United States (1929 – 1933)
3rd United States Secretary of Commerce (1921 – 1928)
Director of the U.S. Food Administration (1917 – 1918)
First Family
First Ladies: Lou Henry
Children: Herbert Hoover Jr., Allan Hoover
Pictures of Lou Hoover from the Library of Congress
Photos
Pictures from the Library of Congress
1929 Inauguration Photographs
Hoover photographs
Genealogy
Hoover genealogy
Hoover Ancestry
Facts about Herbert Hoover
First, Hoover became an orphan at age nine. When Hoover was 6 years old, his father died of a heart attack while suffering a bout of pneumonia. A little more than three years later, Hoovers mother, Hulda, died from pneumonia and typhoid fever, which left young Bertie and his older brother and younger sister parent-less.
- He was the first president born west of the Mississippi River.
- He was a member of Stanford Universitys inaugural class.
- After graduating from Stanford in 1895 with a geology degree, Hoover took an engineering job with the British mining firm of Bewick, Moreing and Company.
- Hoover donated his presidential salary to charity.
Herbert was caught in the Boxer Rebellion in China. Hoover and his new wife, Lou Henry Hoover, were in Tientsin where Herbert was working as a mining engineer. They survived a siege of their compound during the fighting.Herbert Hoover was tendered 87 honorary degrees, which may have been a world record during his lifetime.
Furthermore, he helped save millions from starvation after two world wars; Hoover headed the American Relief Administration, which delivered food to tens of millions of people in more than 20 war-torn countries.
Hoover was recognized around the world as such a great humanitarian that he was nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize. Public opinion of Hoover was so high following his humanitarian work during World War I that both Republicans and Democrats courted him as a presidential candidate in 1920.
On April 7, 1927, Hoover gave a speech from Washington, D.C. He looked into a small black box and spoke into a telephone receiver for an experiment conducted by Bell Laboratories. At the time of his death, he had the longest retirement of any President.
Herbert Hoover Childhood
Herbert Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. His father, Jesse Hoover (1849-1880), was a blacksmith and farm implement store owner, of German, Swiss, and British Isles ancestry. Jesse Hoover and his father Eli had moved to Iowa from Ohio twenty years previously. Hoover’s mother, Hulda Randall Minthorn (1849-1884), was born in Norwich, Ontario, Canada, and was of English and Irish ancestry. Both of his parents were Quakers. Also, Hoover’s family figured prominently in the town’s public prayer life, due almost entirely to Hulda’s role in her church.
His father, noted by the local paper for his “”pleasant, sunshiny disposition””, died in 1880. After working to retire her husband’s debts, retain their life insurance, and care for the children, his mother died in 1884, leaving Hoover (age nine), his older brother, and his younger sister as orphans.
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, a 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.
Where is Herbert Hoover buried?
When he died on October 20, 1964 at the age of 90, the 31st President was laid to rest five days later in this quiet, grassy hillside. More than 100,000 people lined the funeral procession route from Cedar Rapids to West Branch on that warm fall day.
How did Herbert Hoover die?
Hoover died following massive internal bleeding at the age of 90 in his New York City suite at 11:35 a.m. on October 20, 1964, 31 years, seven months, and sixteen days after leaving office.”