His father, Jesse Hoover, was a blacksmith and farm implement store owner of German, Swiss, and English ancestry. As a child, Hoover consistently attended schools, but he did little reading on his own aside from the Bible. Hoover's father, noted by the local paper for his 'pleasant, sunshiny disposition', died in 1880 at the age of 34. He worked in various low-level mining jobs in the Sierra Nevada mountain range until he convinced prominent mining engineer Louis Janin to hire him. After working as a mine scout for a year, Hoover was hired by Bewick, Moreing & Co., a London-based company that operated gold mines in Western Australia.