Richard Milhous Nixon was born on January 9, 1913, on the lemon ranch of his parents, Francis Anthony Nixon (1878-1956) and Hannah Milhous Nixon (1885-1967), in a house his father built in Yorba Linda, California. Richard was the second of five brothers: Harold (1909-1933), Donald (1914-1987), Arthur (1918-1925), and Edward (1930-).

His early life was marked by financial hardship and by the deaths of his brothers Harold and Arthur. In 1922, after the failure of the Nixons' ranch (today the site of the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum), the family moved to be nearer Hannah's relatives in Whittier, California. There, Frank Nixon opened a combination grocery store and gas station, in which the entire Nixon family worked in order to make ends meet.