Presidents’ Day reminds most Americans of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the two presidents who used to share separate commemorations in February. However, for the people of Miami County, Ohio, and West Milton in particular, it brings a reminder of their connection to our 31st president, Herbert Hoover.
The Hoover ancestors migrated from Randolph County, North Carolina in the mid-1700s, moving to what as then the wild west; Ohio only becoming a state in 1803. They settled along the banks of the Stillwater River in what would become West Milton. Hoover’s grandfather, Eli Hoover, was born in 1820 in a house that still exists on Jay Road just outside town. His father John Hoover had sited the house near a spring with cold, fresh water that flows to this day, although sadly the old springhouse has fallen into disrepair. John died November 18, 1831 and is buried in the West Branch cemetery on Garland Road, where the first Quaker meeting house once stood. Today a replica exists on the site and a brick wall surrounds the grounds where many of the first Quaker settlers were laid to rest.
Eli married Mary Davis in West Milton in 1840. Their son Jesse Clark Hoover, born in West Milton in 1846, moved with them to Hubbard, Iowa, and in 1870 married Hulda Randall Minthorn. The couple moved to a farm in West Branch, Iowa.
Jesse Clark Hoover was a blacksmith and his wife Hulda served as a leader of the local Quaker congregation. Their son Herbert was born in West Branch on August 10, 1874, followed by brother Theodore and sister May. Tragedy struck the family when Jesse died of a heart ailment in 1880 to be followed by Hulda, felled by pneumonia three years later.
The orphaned Hoover children went to live with their maternal uncle and aunt, John and Laura Minthorn in Oregon. Many of Hoover’s relatives never left the West Milton area, marrying into local families who proudly claim links to the 31st president. Herbert’s line, however, followed the expansion of the growing country. By 1895 the young Hoover was a member of the first class at Stanford University in California, graduating with a degree in geology and marrying fellow geology student Lou Henry. Together they traveled to Australia and China where Hoover worked as a mining engineer. They learned Mandarin Chinese well enough to converse in it during the White House years when they didn’t want others eavesdropping.
Hoover organized humanitarian relief for trapped foreigners during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, building on that experience to help Americans in Europe during the First World War. His performance caused President Woodrow Wilson to make the pacifist Hoover U.S. food administrator after America’s entry into the war. President Warren Harding appointed Hoover secretary of commerce in 1921.
Having fallen into the political world almost by accident, Hoover found himself the nominee for the presidential election in 1928. He won the election, but faced the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. Herbert Hoover took the blame for an economy in shambles but its cause was hardly his fault. Those who study the Great Depression now laud Hoover for suggesting many of the programs for relief for which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would later take credit. Hoover remained active as a humanitarian and political thinker until his death in New York City on October 29, 1964. His work and thought live on at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute.
Comments