at the time of Herbert's
birth, the "village blacksmith," to give him the convenient title used
by the town and country people about. But really he was of that
ambitious type of blacksmith, not uncommon in the Middle West, whose
shop not only does the repairing of the farm machines and household
appliances, but manufactures various homely metal things, and does a
little selling of agricultural implements on the side. Jesse Hoover's
mind was rather full of ideas about possible "improvements" on the
machines he repaired and sold. And his two sons, Herbert and Theodore,
and Herbert's two sons, Herbert, Jr., and Allan, are all rather given to
the same "inventiveness" about the home.

Hulda Randall Minthorn Hoover, Herbert's mother, was a woman of unusual
mental gifts. After her husband's death she gave much attention to
church work, and became a recognized "preacher" at Quaker meetings. In
this capacity she revealed so much power of expression and exhortation
that she was in much demand. Her death, in 1884, came from typhoid
fever. Those who knew her speak of her "personality." They say that she
had color and attractiveness, although she was unusually shy and
reserved. One can say exactly the same things of her son Herbert.

The immediate Hoover ancestry is Quaker. The more remote is Quaker mixed
with Dutch and French Huguenot. The Dutch name was spelled with an _e_
instead of the second _o_. All of Herbert's grandparents were Quakers,
and the Quaker records run back a long time. One of the family branches
runs into Canada, with the story of a migration there of a group of
refugees from the American colonies during the Revolution. These
emigrants came from prosperous farms in Pennsylvania, but while they
wanted to be free from England's control, they could not, as Quakers,
agree to fight for this freedom. So as the neighbors were inclined to be
a little "unpleasant" about this, and as Canada was just then offering
free farms to colonists, they packed up their movables and _trekked_
north.

Another Canadian branch, French Huguenot in origin, has traditions of
hurried removals from France into Holland before St. Bartholomew's
Night, and of later escapes into the same country. But all finally
decided that Europe anywhere was impossible, and hence they determined
on a wholesale emigration to Canada. Here by chance they settled down
side by side with the little Quaker group which had come from
Pennsylvania. Close association