Hoover became an orphan at age 9

In West Branch, Iowa, a little prairie hamlet of only 265 inhabitants, Herbert Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in a two-room, whitewashed house erected by his father, which is one of the interesting facts about Herbert Hoover. Jesse Clark Hoover was the father of Herbert Hoover, a Quaker who worked as a blacksmith and a seller of agricultural equipment in West Branch until his premature death from a heart attack in 1880 when Herbert was just six years old. Hoover, his older brother Theodore, and his younger sister May were orphans after their mother passed away in 1884. Hoover spent the following 18 months at a neighboring farm with his uncle Allen Hoover.

Hoover was moved to Newberg, Oregon, in November 1885 to live with his uncle John Minthorn, a Quaker doctor and merchant, whose own son had passed away the previous year. The Minthorn family was regarded as refined and educated, and they instilled a strong work ethic. Like West Branch, Newberg was a frontier town founded mostly by Quakers from the Midwest. Minthorn made sure Hoover had a good education, but Hoover detested Minthorn for making him do so many tasks. Hoover was a student at Friends Pacific Academy, which is now George Fox University, but left school at the age of thirteen to work as an administrative assistant in Salem for his uncle's real estate company, Oregon Land Company. Hoover studied arithmetic, typing, and bookkeeping at a night school even though he didn't finish high school.