Herbert Hoover
The 31st President of the USA
(1874-1964)
Herbert Clark Hoover was born into a Quaker family in West Branch, Iowa on August 10, 1874. His father died when Hoover was six, and his mother passed away when he was only nine years old.  After that, he lived with a number of different relatives before finally staying with his uncle, John Minthorn, who lived in Oregon.  At the age of seventeen he applied to Stanford and was the youngest freshmen in the entering class of 1891.  At Stanford he studied engineering and from 1896 to 1914, he worked as a mining engineer.  During that time he started his own mining consulting firm and by 1914 he had amassed an estimated $4 million.  In the 1920’s he served as U.S. Commerce Secretary and in 1928 he won the election against Democrat Al Smith.  However, the first year of his presidency was the year of the stock market crash that marked the beginning of the Great Depression.  His middle-of-the-road policies only worsened the economic situation, resulting in a landslide defeat by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.

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