Mildred Crew Hoover

Family Tree

This is a brief genealogy of Herbert Hoover's family, starting with his parents.

• Jesse Clark Hoover (1846-1880), married 1870 to Hulda Randall Minthorn (1848-1884).
• Theodore Jesse Hoover (1871-1955), married 1899 to Mildred Crew Brooke (1872-1940).
• Midred Brooke Hoover (1901-1983), married to Cornelius Willis. 3 children.
• Hulda Brooke Hoover (1906-2006), married to Charles Alexander McLean. 3 sons.
• Louise Brooke Hoover (1908-1985), married to Ernest Dunbar, Harold Fouts, Kenneth Stevenson, William Hauselt. 2 daughters.
• Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964), married 1898 to Lou Henry (1874-1944).
• Herbert Charles Hoover (1903-1969), married 1925 to Margaret Ava Watson (1905-1983).
• Margaret Ann Hoover (born 1926-2011). 5 children.
• Herbert "Pete" Hoover III (1927-2010). 3 children.
• Joan Ledlie Hoover (1930-2002). 3 children.
• Allan Henry Hoover (1907-1993), married 1937 to Margaret Coberly (1911-2009).
• Allan Hoover (1938-2013). 3 children.
• Andrew Hoover (born 1940). 3 children.
• Lou Henry Hoover (1943-2012).
• Mary Blanche Hoover (1876-1953), married 1899 to Cornelius Van Ness Leavitt (1874-1962).
• Van Ness Hoover Leavitt (1907-1992), married to Dorothy Juanita Berry, Patricia Agnes Rheinschild. 2 sons.

Source: McLean, Hulda Hoover. The Genealogy of the Herbert Hoover Family. The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association, 1967 (out of print).

Mildred & Theodore Hoover

Posted 10 Aug 2023 by esagwp
The Hoovers spent many happy years at Rancho del Oso, south of Pescadero. When Mildred died in 1940, Theodore was grief-stricken but found solace in the memory of the Taj Mahal he had visited decades earlier. He recalled that this “wonder of the world” had been built in honor of a lost love–and Rancho del Oso–his natural wonder–was a testament to Mildred, his lost love.

Hoover eloquently expressed this sentiment in the epilogue of Mildred’s memoirs.

“I now understand,” Hoover wrote, “and see clearly that it was his attempt to form a concrete expression of that haunting mixture of pain and pleasure that is in the hearts of all good men who have ever loved and long loved and lost a loving and good woman.”

Theodore Jesse Hoover died at age 85 at his beloved Rancho del Oso in 1955. He never achieved the fame and notoriety of brother Herbert–but he lived a full life and is remembered for his great love for a wonderful woman.

Theodore “Tad” Hoover was an early conservationist–and an honorary Fish and Game warden, a job he took very seriously.

In the 1930s, near full retirement, he was patrolling Waddell Creek on a Sunday, as was his custom, when he discovered three high school boys. They were fishing the headwaters of Waddell Creek far up in Big Basin country outside the Hoover preserve.

Upon questioning the kids, Hoover discovered they had been fishing without a license and had caught more than the legal limit of trout–way over the limit.

The boys explained that part of the catch was from the previous day and that they intended to bring home the entire batch to friends and family to show what great fishermen they were.

If that excuse wasn’t good enough, the boys offered another: the only reason they were there was because the game warden’s brother, President Hoover, had had terrific luck at that spot.

Theodore Hoover was unimpressed with both explanations even though one of the boys was the son of a state senator. He arrested them, confiscating as evidence the prize of their efforts, a magnificent 24-inch trout.

When the case came to trial, it was Theodore who urged the judge to be lenient.

Yes, the Pescaderan’s called Theodore (”Tad”) Hoover, “Our Mr. Hoover.”

One story that was told and retold–never failing to bring a smile–probably took place in 1935 when former President Herbert Hoover attended a barbecue with Stanford faculty and students at brother Tad’s ranch. On the beautiful drive to the Waddell, the ex-president’s car had a flat tire near the Old Davenport Landing.

A neighbor, County Supervisor Pinkham, offered to help. When he recognized the famous passenger, Pinkham said, “You’re ‘our’ Mr. Hoover’s brother, aren’t you?”

Mildred and Theodore (”Tad”) wanted to move in full time to their house at Rancho del Oso but Stanford University and Palo Alto had too many claims on them.

Theodore was still the dean of the School of Engineering and Mildred helped organized the Palo Alto Art Club, known today as the Pacific Art League. She was president of the club when the membership included the famous newspaper cartoonist James Swinnerton and artists Elizabeth Norton and Phimster Proctor.

Art club member and Stanford geologist Bailey “Earthquake” Willis had a special relationship with the Hoovers. Bailey’s son, Cornelius, wed the Hoover’s daughter, also named Mildred, at Rancho del Oso in 1922.

But the Hoovers visited Rancho del Oso at every opportunity.

As brother Herbert Hoover’s fame continued to skyrocket–ultimately as the 31st president–Theodore’s reputation as a resident of the Waddell also grew. After all he was he the president’s brother. To the locals, he was “Our Mr. Hoover.”

Theodore and Mildred Hoover purchased property in the Waddell Canyon, south of Pescadero…Hoover was the dean of the Engineering School at Stanford, a conservationist and the older borther of the 31st president. Mildred was a writer whose books were published about California history).

Mildred’s study of the Waddell proved to be a labor of love. She learned its name was derived from William W. Waddell, a Kentucky woodsman who established a sawmill at what was then called “Big Gulch.” To move the lumber from deep within the Waddell canyon to a wharf near Ano Nuevo on the Pacific, Waddell had constructed a five-mile tramway., marked with more than 10 bridges, an amazing achievement.

This rough-and-tumble man also raised flowers in a hot-house near his home and built living quarters for his mill workers.

Waddell had prospered for a quarter century, taming nature but then nature, almost in retaliation, saw fit to cut him down. Waddell’s life ws ended as the result of an attack by a grizzly bear.

Upon Waddell’s death, the logging industry fell into decline–but the descendants of the mill stayed on, scratching out a living by farming and whatever else they could do to make ends meet. The Hoovers, who knew every inch of the property, befriended these folks and found them to be remarkable sources of local history.

In 1899, Mildred Brooke, a schoolteacher from Iowa, and Theodore, an engineering student at Stanford, also from Iowa, were to be wed in a Palo Alto church.

Once the young couple had set the date, things moved quickly. The day before the wedding found Mildred on a train speeding from Iowa to California. As the train raced through the changing scenery, click-clacking closer to the big day, she passed the hours chatting with newfound friends.

Bubbling over, she described her soon-to-be husband: Reserved but a good raconteur, under the right circumstances, the life of the party.

When Mildred got off the train in California on June 6, she handed the new friends her “visiting” card. It read: “After tomorrow in Palo Alto as Mrs. Theodore Hoover.”

You have had a half-century of splendid companionship and have the memories of them: for forty years you have had the beautiful, modest, dark-eyed Mildred of Penn College as a treasure in your keeping: treasure these memories and recount them.”

–John Jessup in a letter to Theodore Hoover upon the death of his beloved wife.

The passing of Mildrew Crew Brooke Hoover in Palo Alto in 1940 left husband Theodore desolate. How painful the loss was. He wondered if and how he could continue without her.

Mildred Crew (Brooke) Hoover & Theodore Jesse Hoover

Posted 10 Aug 2023 by esagwp
Mildred and Theodore are buried at Grateful Mountain, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz County
California USA

Cemetery notes and/or description:
Located within Rancho Del Oso-Waddell Valley
State Highway 1
Unincorporated Santa Cruz County, CA.

These graves are NOT located within the boundaries of Rancho Del Oso State Park. Rather, they are on private property and are not accessible to the public.

CATEGORY: MILDRED HOOVER

POSTED ONDECEMBER 11, 2008
Josiah Parker Ames: Miramar Beach could have been named after him
Josiah Parker Ames

By June Morrall'

The few clusters of Americans scattered in the bureaucratically named Department of California felt threatened on the brink of the U.S. war with Mexico in 1846. The settlers smelled invasion in the air. But from whom? They weren’t certain. They feared the Indians who could set fire to their homes and crops; they feared the Mexicans who could take away their livelihood, but for a time these isolated Americans whipped themselves into a frenzy against their old enemy England.

And why not fear England? At that very moment Admiral Seymour of the British Fleet was rumored to be sailing for the Pacific Coast. The settlers wondered if his orders were to take California. The editors of English publications supported the efforts of any country but America in a California takeover. The nerves of Americans were not soothed by the fact that until 1846 England and the U.S. jointly held Oregon.

However, the English decided that Cailfornia was not a plum worth fighting over; or else, as Josiah Royce, author of California, published in 1888, suggests, the British agents were not ready when the time came to strike. After all, it was the United States that went to war with Mexico and won handily in 1848.

Josiah Parker Ames was an Englishman who did not alarm the settlers when he appeared in Half Moon Bay about 1858. Born in England, but reared in New York City, Ames was 20 when he joined Colonel Jonathan Stevenson’s special regiment that sailed around Cape Horn to Califonria in 1847. The colonel’s instructions were to take part in the American occupation and to make the inhabitants “feel that we come as deliverers.” With the completion of the mission, Colonel Stevenson bought a rancho in Contra Costa County. His objective was to turn the land into a large, prosperous city. Josiah Ames followed in the colonel’s footsteps when he cast his eye on Half Moon Bay.

Already Ames had tasted the life of tents and cloth houses in San Francisco and the rawness of life in the gold mines. Filled with energy, he was now ready to buy land, start up businesses, and launch a political career.

Perhaps fellow “Regiment” member James Denniston invited him to the Coastside; they were close friends. After marrying into the Guerrero family, Denniston found himself the wealthy owner of an immense tract of land, called El Corral de Tierra, stretching from Montara to the Arroyo del Medio in Miramar. The creek running through the property in Princeton, where the family resided in an adobe, was named Denniston Creek. He operated Old Landing, where little steamers stopped to load produce in the 1850s.

Jim Denniston was politically powrful. During a trial in which he was the defendant, the jury did not bother to rise from their seats to deliberate elsewhere. They acquitted him on the spot.

While living in Half Moon Bay, Josiah Ames found romance. In 1861 he wed Elizabeth Freeman at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in San Francisco. The happy couple lived in a new 12-room house with ocean views. The San Mateo Times & Gazette gave the house the nod: “It is decidedly the finest dwelling on the other side of the mountain.”

Already a county supervisor, Ames now took office as county treasurer.

Josiah Ames was involved in much of Half Moon Bay’s miniscule economy. In 1873 when seven hundred citizens lived in Half Moon Bay, the flour mill he owned turned out 50 barrels of flour per day. He supplied the town with water. He was the proprietor of the Half Moon Bay Liversy Stable at Kelly and Main Streets.

“J. P. Ames has selected and stocked one of the best equine establshments on the coast,” boasted the Gazette. Perhaps he rented horses for the Fourth of July races at the Half Moon Bay Trotting Track. But there were hard times, too: In 1869 Ames’ good friend, 45-year-old Jim Denniston died of Bright’s Disease. Ames’ wife died in 1871.

His most significant contribution was the building of a wharf and warehouse at the mouth of the Arroyo del Medio Creek in 1868. By this time Denniston’s “Old Landing” had slipped into serious disrepair, and the new wharf, called Amesport Landing, opened up a vital economic link with the outside world.

Ameport prospered in the 1870s. It seemed that San Franciscans could not buy enough Half Moon Bay potatoes. In 1874 the Monterey sailed off with six thousand sacks full. “This is almost like shipping coals to Newcastle,” remarked an amused newspaper correspondent.

The political star of J.P. Ames was rising when he donated a new flag staff to Half Moon Bay in 1876. The local paper described it as “a beautiful stick, with a small platform around the base.” The flagpole was planted on the southwest corner of Main and Kelly Streets.

While Ames reached new political heights as a state legislator, the booming potato business at Amesport fell into decline. A pesty worm had destroyed the crop, including future plantings. The little steamers started to bypass Amesport and finally Ames sold the wharf business to the Pacific Coast Steamship Company. But they were never able to duplicate the heady days of the 1870s.

The connection between Josiah P. Ames and Half Moon Bay was severed. He left the Coastside and was appointed the Warden of San Quentin Prision. He was 76 when he died in Martinez in 1903.

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[Image: Mildred Brooke Hoover, author of Historic Spots in California, 1932. The Hoovers, Mildred and Theodore, lived south of Pescadero at Rancho del Oso. Theodore Hoover headed up Stanford’s Engineering Dept. The Hoovers were well liked in Pescadero, often inviting the locals to dinner.]

Mildred married Theodore Hoover who is a brother to Herbert Hoover the 31st President of the United States.

• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Aug 10 2023, 12:30:19 UTC schwartz