Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933. A member of the Republican Party, he held office during the onset of the Great Depression. Before serving as president, Hoover led the Commission for Relief in Belgium and served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration. He was influential in the development of radio and air travel.

About Herbert Hoover in brief

Summary Herbert HooverHerbert Clark Hoover was the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933. A member of the Republican Party, he held office during the onset of the Great Depression. Before serving as president, Hoover led the Commission for Relief in Belgium and served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration. Hoover was also the third U. S. Secretary of Commerce. He was influential in the development of radio and air travel and led the federal response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. After leaving office, Hoover enjoyed one of the longest retirements of any former president, and he authored numerous works in subsequent decades. Hoover is still widely regarded as an inadequate president and most polls of historians and political scientists rank him in the bottom third overall. Hoover’s father, Jesse Hoover, was a blacksmith and farm implement store owner of German, Swiss, and English ancestry. His mother, Hulda Randall Minthorn, was raised in Norwich, Ontario, Canada, before moving to Iowa in 1859. Like most other citizens of West Branch, Iowa, Jesse and Hulda were Quakers. Hoover attended Pacific Friends Academy, but dropped out at age 13 to live with his uncle, a Quaker physician and businessman whose own son had died the year before. Hoover died of a heart attack at the age of 46. He is buried in West Branch. He had a son, Theodore, and a daughter, May, who were both born in 1884 and died in 1885. Hoover also had an older brother, Theodore Hoover, and his younger sister, May.

Hoover lived with his aunt and uncle in Newberg, Oregon, until 1885, when he moved to West Branch with his mother. He died of pneumonia in 1891. He also lived in Kingsley, California, from 1885 to 1891, when his mother died. Hoover went on to attend Stanford University, where he graduated in 1895. He later worked for a London-based mining company. Hoover unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in the 1920 presidential election. He unsuccessfully ran for president again in 1928, but lost to Al Smith. Hoover pursued a variety of policies in an attempt to lift the economy, but opposed directly involving the federal government in relief efforts. In the midst of the economic crisis, Hoover was decisively defeated by Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential elections. Hoover became increasingly conservative in this time, and strongly criticized Roosevelt’s foreign policy and New Deal domestic agenda. His public reputation was slightly rehabilitated by serving in various assignments for Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, including as chairman of the Hoover Commission. Hoover wrote several books, including “The Great Depression: A Biography of a President” (1930) and “The New York Times” (June 30, 1934). He died in California on October 31, 1934. He left a wife and two children, Theodore and May Hoover, who had been married for more than 30 years. Hoover had no children of his own.