Herbert Hoover

by Glen Jeansonne

  The Hoover family lived in a tiny cottage measuring only twelve by twenty feet, wedged together in a combined sitting room and kitchen, an adjoining bedroom where the children slept, and another bedroom for the parents. Outside there was a back porch, and an outhouse near the well. The building rested upon the banks of the west branch of the Wapsinonoc, usually a mild creek. After thunderstorms it sometimes swelled, surged up to the front door, and swept away fences, bridges, horses, cattle, and people. A footbridge connected the modest home with Jesse’s blacksmith shop on the adjoining bank. The setting was humble yet not bleak. A white picket fence surrounded the front yard, where Huldah planted marigolds, snapdragons, and tiger lilies. “My life started amid golden love and glorious sunshine,” Tad remembered.6

  Bertie’s life began auspiciously. His parents were kind, upright, popular in the community, upwardly mobile, and caring. He was surrounded by a nurturing environment of fellow Quakers, including aunts, uncles, and cousins. Their stable community included no rich and no poor. The family was attuned to the changing of seasons, the sowing and reaping of crops, and the rhythms of nature.7

  No twentieth-century president, with the exception of Theodore Roosevelt, derived such spiritual replenishment from nature. Hoover would later look back on his time in West Branch with nostalgia for small-town life and scenic beauty. It marked his lifelong addiction to the outdoors, a taste for pastoral settings, and empathy for rural America. “I prefer to think of Iowa as I saw it through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy,” he later wrote, “and the eyes of all ten-year-old Iowa boys are or should be filled with the wonders of Iowa’s streams and woods, of the mystery of growing crops.”8 He recalled Cook’s Hill, “that great long hill where, on winter nights, we slid down at terrific speeds with our tummies tight in home-made sleds.” Local creeks and rivers were swarming with sunfish and catfish, which he and his brother caught, cooked, and ate. Their primitive tackle was a willow pole with a butcher line for a string and cheap hooks. For good luck they spit on their bait—a worm.9 As a world-known figure, Hoover was asked which subject he liked best in school as a young man. “None,” he answered. “They were something to race through so I could get out of doors.”10

  Hoover remembered his childhood in Iowa as a time of daily adventures and exploration, “the wonder of growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care.”11 Not only did he learn character-molding lessons that tested his mettle and stretched his imagination; life on the frontier also gave him a tough, resilient body, and neither farm nor village chores daunted him. He dutifully planted corn, hoed gardens, milked cows, and sawed and carried wood. As he worked, Hoover tapped his fertile young mind and planted seeds that blossomed as he matured and made him an unusually creative person with enormous drive. He learned to be resourceful, to rely on his intuition and instincts and, because he was sometimes alone, to trust his own judgment. He learned to soften loneliness.

  Bertie demonstrated unusual industry in a hobby that foreshadowed his profession. Frequently trekking to the Burlington railroad tracks, where the construction engineers had hauled glacial gravel and dumped it as ballast along the road, he foraged for specimens, finding agate, coral, crystals, and fossils of ancient creatures embedded in stone, which provoked his curiosity. He searched along the edges of ponds, creeks, and rivers, carried the rocks home, and labeled them. The collection became his most prized possession. Bertie was fortunate to find a local dentist, Dr. William Walker, who shared his hobby of collecting stones and was an amateur geologist who owned agate from Colorado and marble from Vermont.12

  Much of the boy’s time, when he was not at home, at school, or outdoors, was spent in Quaker worship. The creed dominated the small communities of his youth. Officially known as the Society of Friends, the Quaker denomination was created in England by George Fox in 1652 to restore Christianity to its humble origins, to strip away the ceremony and worldly ostentation that had crept into Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Presbyterianism. Quakers rejected adornments such as steeples, stained glass windows, and organs. Dress was plain, emphasizing subdued colors of gray and black, and language was candid. The Friends, as they were known, did not recognize any person as their superior and employed no form of salutation that might be interpreted as a sign of servility. They considered all men brothers, none exalted over another. All agreements between Quakers were oral; their word was sufficient. They evinced resolute individualism, tolerance, thrift, directness, and transparent honesty. Any type of honest labor, mental or manual, received due respect, and education was venerated. Modesty, humility, an aversion to idle gossip, and protection of privacy, all Quaker traits, would later prove handicaps to Hoover as president.13

  Although Quakers were stubbornly individualistic, they also believed in bonds of unity and in cooperation, especially within their immediate communities. They cared for one another, and Quakers were rarely in dire need. Yet they did not want to encourage sloth and helped only those in want through no fault of their own. Despite their equability, there was a hard edge to Quaker charity. The able-bodied were expected to support themselves. An ill person, for example, would be helped only for the duration of his or her hardship. Hoover’s sect was highly disciplined, rarely wasted time, and believed in social order. Thus, freedom was never absolute. The ideas of liberty and responsibility were merged, and Hoover described his own ideal as “ordered liberty.” From his religion Hoover also derived his philosophy combining idealism and practicality. His sect did not oppose wholesome recreation, yet life was a serious business, and individuals should be purpose driven. They received fulfillment through assisting, serving others, and close friendships, with an unusual affinity for lifelong bonds. Men were entitled to the rewards of honest labor, and the Friends strove for social justice yet discouraged the flaunting of wealth.14

  Quakerism took root in West Branch from its founding, and it remains influential to this day. After outgrowing services in private homes, the early settlers erected a one-room meetinghouse that seated about a hundred. With no predetermined programs, congregants relied on spirit to inspire them to pray, to speak, or, rarely, to sing. Singing or excessive speaking by an individual was attributed to vanity or to inspiration from a dark source. Sunday entertainment of any kind was discouraged. Services lasted about two hours, much of the time devoted to silent meditation.

  While he occasionally chafed at discipline, Hoover never rebelled against the essential doctrines of his childhood faith, although he developed minor vices such as smoking cigars and drinking in moderation, and his Sabbath attendance was irregular. Hoover was whimsical about some Quaker customs, which he remembered nostalgically. “Quaker children were submitted to a certain mild discipline,” he wrote. They were, for example, required to read a chapter of the New Testament every morning. “Out of which I became for life a walking Concordance,” he explained. “But in a large way there were no inhibitions on the non-destructive energies of children.” Though Huldah rejected novels as untruth and limited the family library to the Bible, an encyclopedia, and tracts denouncing alcohol, her mischievous sons sneaked peeks at adventure novels such as Robinson Crusoe and The Deerslayer when they visited the homes of more lenient relatives. Hoover remembered that his parents and extended family stimulated the imaginations of their children by encouraging fantasies, including beliefs in Mother Goose and Santa Claus. “But any taint of militarism, including wooden swords and toy soldiers, were rigidly excluded.” Christmas was a time for homespun enjoyment. He remembered, “Cutting down a Christmas tree was a ceremony. It was decorated with strings of popcorn for snow. Roasting the popcorn, collecting nuts from the woods and making the candy from maple and sorghum molasses were children’s privileges.” On Christmas morning, the children awakened to stockings stuffed by Santa Claus, and that day’s service at the meetinghouse featured the reading aloud
of the second chapter of Luke and the Sermon on the Mount. At noon, “there was a superlative Christmas dinner,” he recalled, “with all the fixings known even to New York City, except caviar and alcohol.”15

  Hoover was proud of the self-sufficiency of his pioneer Quaker ancestors. “They operated their own creameries, meat packing, and fruit preserving,” he wrote. “They ground their own cornmeal, made their own maple and sorghum syrup, made their own soap and repaired their own machinery.” The children worked after school and enjoyed it, and everyone practiced thrift.16

  Hoover carried most Quaker traits all his life. His reticence, for example, and self-effacing style, his preference for privacy, and his devotion to his immediate and extended family, as well as his commitment to those legitimately in need, were common among Quakers. Still, the adult Herbert Hoover did not emerge from a mold. In some respects he was atypical, or possessed certain traits to an unusual degree. It would be an oversimplification to consider Hoover’s environment deterministic. After all, West Branch produced many Quakers yet only one Herbert Hoover.

  Bertie entered the first grade at five, the youngest student, somewhat ill prepared. He missed the first week and was often absent. Temporarily held back from promotion to the next grade, he compensated for the lost time and rejoined his classmates. He soon proved an average student who excelled at math. Popular with teachers and schoolmates, he was at times a target for school-ground bullies because he had been taught not to fight back. His first-grade teacher, Mrs. Stephen Sunier, reflected, “He was studious. A real cherub. Just a sweet little boy. Bertie was a smiling boy and good-natured but he had a reserve about him that was puzzling. Yes, he had wonderful dignity for a little fellow. You didn’t have to tell him to study.” Mollie Brown, who taught Bertie in the third and fourth grades, was especially fond of him. Brown instructed him in arithmetic, geography, language, and physiology, for which no textbooks were used. She spent her own spare time helping him keep abreast when he missed class. By fourth grade he had become more serious and somewhat withdrawn, though still likable. “His mother was rather strict with him,” Brown said, “but when she gave him permission to go to the swimming hole he would fairly fly to see who got there first, and he would be half undressed before he got there. He was a playful boy, yet he remembered his lessons and was quiet.”17

  When he was a small boy, Bertie’s attention was not always directed on his studies. The Hoover brothers played pickup games of baseball and football at recess, after school, and between chores. Bertie was a better-than-average baseball player. A bit chubby, he possessed average speed yet was agile and determined. Huldah enrolled Bertie in the Band of Hope, a youth organization that promoted Prohibition. Though uninterested in politics as a boy, he later remembered when his mother remained at the polls all day to help persuade men to vote Iowa a dry state, which they did. Bertie claimed that even the town drunk voted for abstention.18

  The Hoovers lived in their small cottage only a few years before Jesse sold the house and blacksmith shop, began selling and repairing farm implements and home accessories, and purchased a second, larger home. Here, sister May was born. Bertie enjoyed watching his father coat barbed wire with smoldering tar in order to preserve the barbs. Once, while alone in the shop, wondering whether tar might burn, the boy tossed a hot ember into the boiling vat, which burst into flames, nearly destroying Jesse’s business and engulfing an adjacent store. Quickly, townsmen assembled a bucket brigade to douse the inferno. Two years later, his business prospering, Jesse bought a more spacious home. A mansion by the standards of Bertie’s tiny birthplace, the house sat on about an acre of land. Five red maples grew on the front lawn, with a crab apple tree and a vegetable and flower garden in the backyard. The Hoover boys later recalled family picnics, Fourth of July celebrations, county fairs, and visits to relatives. Nonetheless, the happy memories were overshadowed by the tragic events of those years.19

  Until the winter of his sixth year, Bertie’s world seemed nearly idyllic. His parents nurtured their children and enjoyed life. A strong, robust man in his prime, Jesse exuded vibrant health. Energetic and fun loving, he had a new home, a large circle of friends, and a thriving business. Then Jesse contracted what initially appeared to be merely a cold, but actually constituted the early symptoms of typhoid. An epidemic had spread throughout the village, disseminated by contaminated water. The children were sent to visit their uncle Benjah, who owned a farm near West Branch, while Jesse recovered, but he grew worse. On December 15, Benjah loaded Jesse’s children into his one-horse sleigh and sped them home, where they found their aunts and uncles praying over the corpse of their father, dead at thirty-four. Tad took the loss hardest, writing that his father’s unexpected death had created “a void unfillable and unfilled forever. Here, then, passed out of my life my hero, the one in whom were found all those qualities and noble attributes which, in the budding ambition of later years, I desired for my own.”20

  Huldah now became the dominant figure in the children’s lives and virtually their sole support. Though she inherited his small estate, Jesse left a modest life insurance policy, and his farm-implement business was sold. To supplement her family’s income, Huldah harvested vegetables from the garden, took in sewing, and rented rooms to boarders. With her husband gone, profound religious emotions began to surface in the sensitive young widow. She spoke out more frequently at meetings, earned a reputation for inspired soliloquies, and soon became an itinerant preacher, traveling to nearby meetinghouses. As her reputation grew, she sometimes stayed away several weeks, boarding her children with relatives. Huldah was conflicted by the varied responsibilities of raising her family, earning a meager subsistence, and serving God. She wrote her sister Agnes, “I just keep myself ready first for service to my master—then to work at whatever I can to earn a little to add to our living and then the care of my little ones.” Her life a constant tug-of-war between her preaching and her children, she was plagued by a guilty conscience because she loved both. “Every day is full,” she explained, “and sometimes the nights. I will try to do what I can and not neglect the children.”21

  While Huldah was traveling, Bertie, Tad, and May often stayed with their uncle Benjah and aunt Ellen. Benjah had married a Methodist and converted to his wife’s faith, but that did not disrupt the family relationship; they had habitually dined with Bertie’s parents and their children each Sabbath. Bertie and Tad became close friends with their cousin George and enjoyed high jinks on the farm, where discipline was somewhat milder. On one occasion the boys kidnapped an owlet from its mother’s nest and tried vainly to train it as a pet. The nocturnal bird provided little amusement; it was awake only when the boys slept, and eventually it escaped.22

  Bertie and Tad spent one magic summer in the company of six young Osage Indian braves who attended the Indian Industrial School at West Branch and remained during the vacation period. The young Native Americans and the Hoover boys built a hideaway secluded within a twenty-acre grove of trees, away from the prying eyes of adults. The boys learned Native American lore, such as making and shooting bows and arrows and building fires by rubbing sticks or rocks together to strike a spark. Tad and Bertie also made slingshots for shooting birds, which could be concealed from their mother more easily than a quiver. Usually they shot at robins, doves, or prairie chickens, but on one occasion they ambushed and roasted a flock of domestic chickens that had strayed from a farm. Bertie was too young to hunt seriously, but he tagged along, and the expeditions whetted his appetite to spend more time in the wilderness.23

  A few years later, Hoover spent an entire summer on the Osage Reservation in Indian Territory (Oklahoma), where his uncle, Laban Miles, was the Indian agent. Bert and the Miles family were the only white people on the reservation, and Bert played daily with a tribe of young Osage Indians who taught him their wilderness lore, lessons that were implanted for life. Bert attended the Indian school and immersed himself in their lifestyle. For the momen
t, he experienced a summer of glorious freedom without Quaker restraint, onerous chores, or loneliness.24

  If the death of Jesse had been a trauma to the children, the next loss was devastating. In the bitter winter cold of 1884, Huldah left home for Muscatine to preach. With no transportation available, she walked about four miles after she had given her bed to an older person the previous night and slept on a chilly floor. She contracted a severe cold, which worsened, despite treatment, and evolved into pneumonia. Huldah died on February 24 at the age of thirty-six and was buried next to Jesse in the family plot. Tad was inconsolable. He complained of “a poignant grief for the early ending of a life of one who was always loving and kind and tender.” He expressed his anguish with heartrending words: “The lady of the golden sunshine of the little brown house had gone away and there were left only three small children, adrift on the wreck of their little world.”25

  Bertie, age nine, was publicly stoic, yet the pain carved a gorge of despair that the years could not bridge. The final prop of stability had been knocked from beneath the heartbroken orphans. The trauma compelled Hoover to become independent and self-reliant while yet a boy. It deprived him of love and physical affection, which as an adult he found difficult to express demonstrably. Some fifty years later, he wrote of the time spent in West Branch: “As gentle as are the memories of that time I am not recommending a return to the good old days. Sickness was greater and death came sooner.”26 Still, he repeatedly advised children to take their time growing up, enjoy their early years, and avoid trepidation about the future. He was speaking from experience.