and Hulda. Jesse's blacksmith had grown to be very successful, and in 1878, Jesse Hoover sold the practice to open a farm implement store on the corner of Main and Downey Streets. In March 1879, the family moved to the House of the Maples, a two-story frame house. Hoover may have attended classes at an 1853 schoolhouse at the corner of Main and Downey Streets. He attended Quaker services at the nearby Friends Meetinghouse. The prosperity of the Hoover family suddenly ended on December 13, 1880, when Jesse died of rheumatic fever. Hulda supported the family by sewing and taking in boarders. However, Hulda died of typhoid fever on February 24, 1884. Now an orphan, nine-year-old Herbert Hoover was sent to live with his uncle Allan Hoover on a nearby farm. Two years later, Hoover was sent to Newberg, Oregon to live with another uncle. Hoover career and presidency Herbert Hoover became a prosperous mining engineer, becoming very wealthy after working in Australia and China. He married Lou Henry in 1899. During World War I, Hoover was moved by a food crisis in Europe. Hoover oversaw operations for the Commission for Relief in Belgium to feed the nation of Belgium throughout the war. After the United States entered the war, Hoover was appointed the head of the U.S. Food Administration. Hoover was lauded for his efforts in his homeland. He campaigned on behalf of Warren G. Harding in 1920, who rewarded Hoover by appointing him Secretary of Commerce in his cabinet. In 1928, Hoover was considered the leading candidate for president by the Republican Party. He defeated Al Smith in a landslide. However, his term was marred by the economic downturn of the Great Depression. Despite efforts to right the economy, Hoover was himself defeated in a landslide in 1932 to Franklin D. Roosevelt. During World War II, Hoover was again tasked with providing food to war-torn countries. Gravesite Herbert Hoover died from internal bleeding in 1964, enjoying the longest retirement of any President to that point. Hoover considered his years in West Branch to be his most formative, and requested that he and his wife (who had died twenty years earlier) be buried there. Allan Hoover selected the site, which was landscaped before Herbert Hoover's death. 100,000 people lined the funeral procession route between Cedar Rapids and West Branch. William Wagner designed the memorial in collaboration with surviving Hoover