Donald Trump’s family tree: These are the president’s family members who immigrated to the United States
From Germany to Scotland, the roots of Donald Trump’s family reveal a history of immigration and reinvention.
Every decision we make in life is a potential sliding doors moment, so we can only imagine how radically different the world would be today had Friedrich Trump not been denied the chance to return to his native Germany in the early 1900s.
Friedrich Trump’s one-way ticket to the United States
Friedrich, Donald Trump’s paternal grandfather, was one of three of the US President’s immediate family members who immigrated to the United States.
On October 7, 1885, the 16-year-old barber traveled to the United States on a one-way ticket in order to escape German military service, an illegal act in his home country.
Why Donald Trump claimed grandfather was Swedish
And Germany was his home country, despite claims to the contrary made by Donald and Fred Trump, Friedrich’s grandson and son respectively.
Both publicly referred to Friedrich as hailing from Sweden, as the current president stated in his 1987 co-written book “The Art of the Deal.” However, John Walter, Trump’s cousin and family historian, revealed Fred Trump had changed his father’s backstory to avoid upsetting Jewish friends and clients after World War II in particular.
Donald Trump has since acknowledged his grandfather’s German origins.
Friedrich Trump forced to stay in US
After making a small fortune living in New York and Seattle, as well as the Yukon in Canada, Friedrich attempted to return to Germany, only to discover his Bavarian citizenship had been revoked due to him skipping military service, forcing him to stay in the United States with wife Elisabeth Christ, Donald Trump’s paternal grandmother, who hailed from the same German town.
Donald Trump’s mother almost returned to Scotland
On the opposite side of the family, Mary Anne MacLeod, Donald Trump’s mother, moved to New York from her parents’ home in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides at the age of 18.
Similar to her father-in-law, she was considering quitting her job as a domestic worker, in which she earned little, and returning to the Scottish Isle of Lewis when she met Fred Trump at a party in Queens in the 1930s.
In “Trump Revealed,” a biography of the US president written by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, it is claimed Fred Trump returned home from said party and announced to his mother he had met the woman he was planning to marry.
The rest, as they say, is history.
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