The Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in nearby West Branch honors Herbert Hoover, a distinguished son of Iowa, citizen of the world, and the thirty-first president of the United States. Its foundations were laid before its 1965 establishment, beginning in 1937 when family and friends started restoring the two-room cottage where he was born in 1874. The Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, built by the Herbert Hoover Birthplace Foundation entirely with private funds, was dedicated in 1962, and two years later the library, containing his personal papers and memorabilia, and its grounds were donated by the foundation to the American people. In 1964, Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover were buried at the presidential gravesite on a gentle knoll overlooking his birthplace cottage. Restored West Branch homes from about 1880, the Friends Meetinghouse where he worshiped as a boy, and a replica of the family blacksmith shop recall the small Midwestern village that gave Herbert Hoover to the nation and the world. Hoover said, "The most formative years of boyhood were spent here. My roots are in this soil." Born in West Branch, orphaned at age nine, and becoming president at fifty-four, he carried from the community a sense of fairness, belief in equal opportunity, faith in humanity, and personal integrity. Settled by the Society of Friends, or Quakers, in 1850, West Branch was founded in religious faith, tolerance, and devotion to individual liberty, with concern for the soul's welfare and the mind's development, hospitality, and honest labor as guiding principles. Those qualities left an indelible mark on Hoover and shaped the public service for which he won distinction throughout the world.