Mr
...Eli in 1854. They traveled by river boat and covered wagon to a farm outside West Branch, Iowa, a small town founded by Quakers. In 1870, Jesse, now the town blacksmith, married Hulda Minthorn, a teacher from Ontario, Canada.
The Hoovers began a family in a small cottage by the Wapsinonoc Creek. Their first son Theodore (Tad, 1871) was followed on August 10, 1874 by another boy, Herbert Clark Hoover (Bert). On the occasion of his son's birth Jesse went through town declaring, "We have another General Grant in our house." Herbert's birth was followed in 1876 by the birth of a sister, Mary (May).
The Hoover children spent their early years growing up in West Branch, Iowa. West Branch provided both joys and hazards of life. The children could hike, explore, and swim as well as hunt for fossils and agate in the glacial gravel along the railroad tracks. Their Quaker upbringing forbade the Hoover boys from carrying a gun, so they learned to hunt for rabbit and prairie chickens with bow and arrow. They learned these skills from young Indian boys who were attending a local government training school. Willow poles, butcher string lines and hooks that cost a penny apiece provided Herbert Hoover with sunfish and catfish. There was also Cook's Hill for sledding on home-made sleds.
Their fun was tempered by the possibility of natural disaster and disease. The Iowa summer sun could scorch crops; prairie storms might wash out spring plantings or level a dwelling; the relentless winter favored typhus, diphtheria and pneumonia. Herbert Hoover's own memories give a glimpse into his childhood. He remembered trips into the country with his father Jesse. He also recalls as a small boy getting stuck in mud while crossing an unpaved road during a particularly rainy summer. "Papa's little stick-in-the-mud," his father called him as he lifted Bert to freedom.
At this shop there...
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