Who are Mary Anne MacLeod and Fred Trump, Donald Trump's parents of Scottish and German origin?

Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, who could secure a non-consecutive second term this November 5 – something only done once before – was born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York. His anti-immigrant rhetoric carries a certain irony in light of his family background.

Scottish-German anti-immigration Trump

He is the son of European immigrants: Mary Anne MacLeod, from Scotland, and Fred Trump, whose father Frederick (Donald’s grandfather) hailed from Germany. This diverse heritage reflects the history of the United States itself – a nation built by immigrants.

MacLeod was born on May 10, 1912, in Tong on the Isle of Lewis in Scottish/British territory. She was raised in a humble, Gaelic-speaking family that endured the hardships of World War I; her father was a tenant farmer and fisherman. Mary Anne didn’t learn English until eighth grade. She emigrated to the United States in March 1930 to join her older sister Christine, who was already living in the country, as documented by The National. She departed from Glasgow on the RMS Transylvania and arrived in New York on an immigration visa, intending to gain US citizenship.

Reports indicate that Mary Anne arrived in the States with $50 in her pocket and lived with Christine in Long Island. She found work as a domestic worker and nanny for a wealthy New York family. She eventually gained naturalization in 1942. The same year she arrived in the Big Apple, she met Fred Trump at a dance. They fell in love and soon married – in January 1936 at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Accounts describe her as a reserved, slender woman with a distinctively styled, extravagant orange swirl of hair (which her son Donald is thought to have drawn inspiration from) and blue eyes. She passed away on August 7, 2000, at the age of 88 at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center. In her later years, she suffered from advanced osteoporosis, which gradually weakened her health following several incidents and falls.

From Drumpf to Trump

The Trump family’s original surname was Drumpf. Friedrich Drumpf, the family’s first patriarch, arrived in the United States from Germany in 1885. He married Donald’s grandmother, Elisabeth Christ, in Kallstadt, their hometown. The couple settled in New York (more specifically, in the Bronx), where Fred – whose full name was Frederick Christ Trump (now with a “de-Germanized” surname) – was born. He attended Fordham University and, in 1927, at just 22, graduated as a real estate agent. Together with his mother, he founded the Trump Organization, a developer focused on low-cost construction projects. Their main area of influence was in Queens.

During the Great Depression, Fred ventured into the supermarket industry, further increasing his wealth. In the late 1960s, he handed over control of the family business to his son Donald, who always regarded Fred as a crucial influence in shaping his character. “I learned from my father that every penny counts, long before your pennies turn into dollars,” Trump wrote in his bestseller The Art of the Deal.

Like Donald, Fred was no stranger to scrutiny from authorities. In 1927, he was arrested following an incident involving members of the Ku Klux Klan and the New York City police, though no charges were filed. Later, in the late 1970s, the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Trump Organization for discrimination, alleging that Black individuals were barred from renting its apartments. The case was eventually dismissed, though it has remained a focal point among critics of the Trump family.

Fred Trump passed away on June 25, 1999, at the same hospital where his wife, Mary Anne, would die a year later. His death was due to complications from pneumonia, and he had also suffered from Alzheimer’s since the early 1990s.