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Report nowDonald Trump is celebrating his 80th birthday—reason enough to take a closer look at the U.S. president’s family tree. What’s surprising: His mother was a poor immigrant from Scotland, while his grandfather’s origins were simply kept secret.
Here—ladies first—we’ll first examine Donald Trump’s maternal lineage, because it’s quite compelling. His mother was born in the village of Tong—a place on the island of Lewis, far in the north of Scotland in the Outer Hebrides.
Allow me to introduce: This is Mary Anne MacLeod Trump with her son in a photo from 1992. The then 80-year-old’s resemblance to Donald Trump is plain to see. As a young woman, she looked quite different...
Image: imago/ZUMA Press
It is an irony of history that Donald Trump’s own mother was a penniless immigrant, while decades later her son wins elections on the promise of limiting immigration.
Fred and Mary Anne Trump pose with their 18-year-old son Donald at the New York Military Academy in 1964: Like his son, his father was born in New York. But where did Fred’s parents actually come from?
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In his book *The Art of the Deal*, Donald Trump claims his grandfather immigrated to the U.S. “as a child from Sweden.” His father Fred is also said to have fibbed about his own father’s origins—especially when the real estate developer was dealing with Jewish fellow citizens.
It wasn’t until 1999 that the future president admitted that his grandfather, Frederick Trump, was born in 1869 as Friedrich Trump in Kallstadt, in what was then the Kingdom of Bavaria. The town is located 20 kilometers west of Mannheim in what is now the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Frederick Trump in 1887, when he was already in the U.S.
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Friedrich Trump emigrated to the U.S. in 1885 at the age of just 16. He was registered with the immigration authorities as “Freidr. Trumpf.” Friedrich stayed with his older sister Katharina and her husband Fred Schuster in New York and worked for six years at a barber shop.
Friedrich Trump in a photograph taken between 1885 and 1889.
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In 1891, Friedrich gathered his savings and moved to the West Coast, which was in the midst of a gold rush. In Seattle, Washington, he opened a restaurant that also featured a “ladies’ room.” In other words: it was a brothel. A year later, Friedrich became a naturalized citizen.
In 1894, he sold the restaurant and moved on to Monte Cristo, Washington. Before that, he had purchased a 16-hectare plot of land—the Trumps’ first real estate deal in the U.S. He built an inn and stayed for three years before returning to Seattle and opening another restaurant.
This Seattle newspaper reported on gold discoveries on July 17, 1897.
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To profit from the Klondike Gold Rush, Frederick moved again: In Bennett, British Columbia, he opened another inn where prostitutes also worked. Because laws were being tightened, he handed the establishment over to his business partner in 1901.
Donald Trump’s grandfather: Frederick Trump. The photo shows him in 1918.
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It is the year in which Friedrich returns to his German hometown of Kallstadt as a wealthy man and meets Elisabeth Christ, whom he asks to marry him. The couple married in 1902, moved to New York, but soon ended up back in Kallstadt. There, however, Friedrich was deported again. In 1904, they had their daughter Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Christ and Frederick Trump in a photo from 1902.
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The authorities accuse him of having left Germany to avoid military service. By the summer of 1905, they were back in New York, where their son Fred was born in October. Brother John Trump followed in 1907. In 1908, the family purchased a property with a house and rented out some of the rooms.
Frederick, also known as Friedrich Trump, his wife Elizabeth Trump, and their children (from left) Fred (Donald Trump’s father), Elizabeth, and John in a photo from around 1915.
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In 1918, Friedrich Trump died of the Spanish flu at the age of 49. His wife Elisabeth and his son Fred continued to manage the real estate business that would make Donald Trump’s father a multibillionaire.
Donald Trump turns 80 today. He has thus outlived his oldest sister as well as his oldest and youngest brothers.
His parents’ eldest child is Maryanne Trump Barry, who was born in 1937 and passed away in 2023.
Frederick Christ “Freddy” Trump was born in 1938 and died in 1981 at the age of 42 from a heart attack attributed to his alcoholism.
His sister Elizabeth Trump Grau was born in 1942, and the current president followed four years later. The youngest is Robert Stewart Trump, born in 1948 and who passed away in 2020.
Maryanne Trump Barr (1937–2023) was a lawyer, prosecutor, and judge. She <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/maryanne-trump-barry-secret-recordings/2020/08/22/30d457f4-e334-11ea-ade1-28daf1a5e919_story.html">reportedly</a> did not think highly of her brother Donald. She lived to be 86 years old. The photo shows her in New York in 2016.
Image: KEYSTONE
Of the five children, only Donald Trump and his sister Elizabeth Trump Grau, who is four years older, are still alive today.
