Frederick Trump
Frederick Trump was a German and American businessman. He was the patriarch of the Trump family and the paternal grandfather of Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th president of the United States.
Born and raised in Kallstadt, in what was then the Kingdom of Bavaria, Trump immigrated to the United States in 1885. In 1891, he began speculating in real estate in Seattle. During the Klondike Gold Rush, he moved to the Yukon, Canada and made his fortune by operating a restaurant and a brothel for miners in Whitehorse.
In 1901, Trump returned to Kallstadt and married Elisabeth Christ. As he had failed to complete mandatory military service and notify the authorities of his departure in 1885, the Bavarian government stripped him of his citizenship in 1905 and ordered him to leave. Consequently, he returned to the United States with his family.
Trump worked as a barber and manager of a restaurant-hotel and was beginning to acquire real estate in Queens when he died in the 1918 flu pandemic.
Early life
Friedrich Trump was born in Kallstadt in the Palatinate to Johannes Trump II and Katharina Kober. Confessionally, the village was Lutheran.Trump's earliest known male ancestor is Johann Philipp Drumpft, who married Juliana Maria Rodenroth. The couple had a son, Johann Sebastian Trump. Johann Sebastian's son Johann Paul Trump was born in Bobenheim am Berg.
The first link to Kallstadt can be established for Johann Sebastian's grandson Johannes Trump who was born in Bobenheim am Berg and married in Kallstadt, where he also died.
From 1816 to 1918, when Bavaria became the Free State of Bavaria, the Palatinate was part of the Kingdom of Bavaria. In 1871, Bavaria became a part of the newly formed German Empire. During periods of war and anti-German discrimination in the US, Trump's son Fred later denied his German heritage, claiming his father had been a Swede from Karlstad. This version was repeated by Fred's son Donald in his 1987 autobiography.
After being sick with emphysema for 10 years, Trump's father, Johannes, died on July 6, 1877, aged 48, leaving the family in severe debt from medical expenses. While five of the six children worked in the family grape fields, Friedrich was considered too sickly to endure such hard labor. In 1883, then aged 14, he was sent to nearby Frankenthal by his mother to work as a barber's apprentice and learn the trade.
Trump worked seven days a week for two and a half years under barber Friedrich Lang. After completing his apprenticeship, he returned to Kallstadt, a village with about 1,000 inhabitants. He discovered there was not enough business to earn a living. He was also approaching the age of eligibility for conscription to military service in the Imperial German Army. He decided to immigrate to the United States, later saying, "I agreed with my mother that I should go to America." Years later, his family members said that he departed secretly at night, leaving his mother a note. As a result of Trump fleeing mandatory conscription required of all citizens, a royal decree was issued banishing him from the country.
Immigration to the United States
In 1885, at age 16, Trump immigrated via Bremen, Germany, to the United States aboard the steamship Eider, departing on October 7 and arriving at the Castle Garden Immigrant Landing Depot in New York City on October 19. As he had not yet served the mandatory military duty of two years in the Kingdom of Bavaria, this emigration was illegal under Bavarian law. U.S. immigration records list his name as "Friedr. Trumpf" and his occupation as "none". He moved in with his older sister Katharina – who had immigrated in 1883 – and her husband Fred Schuster, also from Kallstadt. Only a few hours after arriving, he met a German-speaking barber who was looking for an employee, and began working the following day. He worked as a barber for six years. Trump lived with his relatives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in a neighborhood with many Palatine German immigrants, at 76 Forsyth Street. Due to the cost of operating at 76 Forsyth Street getting expensive, they later moved to 606 East 17th Street and to 2012 2nd Avenue.In 1891, Trump moved to Seattle, in the newly admitted U.S. state of Washington. With his life savings of several hundred dollars, he bought the Poodle Dog, which he renamed the Dairy Restaurant, and supplied it with new tables, chairs, and a range. Located at 208 Washington Street, the Dairy Restaurant was in the middle of Seattle's Pioneer Square; Washington Street was nicknamed "the Line" and included an assortment of saloons, casinos, and brothels. Biographer Gwenda Blair called it "a hotbed of sex, booze, and money, was the indisputable center of the action in Seattle." The restaurant served food and liquor and was advertised to include "Rooms for Ladies", a common euphemism for prostitution. In 1892, Trump became a U.S. citizen and voted in Washington's first presidential election. He lived in Seattle until early 1893.
On February 14, 1894, Trump sold the Dairy Restaurant, and in March, he moved to the emerging mining town of Monte Cristo, Washington, in Snohomish County north of Seattle. After evidence of mineral deposits had been discovered in 1889, Monte Cristo was expected to produce a fortune in gold and silver. Many prospectors moved to the area in hopes of becoming rich. Rumors about financial investments by millionaire John D. Rockefeller in the entire Everett area created an exaggerated expectation of the area's potential.
Before leaving Seattle, Trump bought in the Pine Lake Plateau, east of the city, for $200, which was the first major real estate purchase of the Trump family. In Monte Cristo, Trump chose a plot of land near the later train station that he wanted to build a hotel on, but could not afford the $1,000-per-acre fee to purchase it. Instead, he filed a gold placer claim on the land, which allowed him to claim exclusive mineral rights to the land without having to pay for it, even though the land had already been claimed by Everett resident Nicholas Rudebeck. At that time, the United States General Land Office was known to be corrupt and frequently allowed such multiple claims. Despite the placer's claim providing Trump no right to build any structure on the land, he quickly bought lumber to build a new boarding house and operate it similarly to the Dairy Restaurant. He never tried to mine gold on the land. Blair described Trump as "mining the miners" since they needed a place to sleep at night while they were mining.In July 1894, Rudebeck filed to incorporate the land and sent an agent to collect rent; this was apparently unsuccessful since the people of Monte Cristo did not pay attention to legal titles. Trump finally bought the land in December 1894. While in Monte Cristo, Trump was elected in 1896 as justice of the peace by a 32-to-5 margin.
Years of mining had revealed that there was not nearly as much gold and silver in Monte Cristo as had once been believed, and in August 1894, Rockefeller pulled out of most of his investment in the area, creating the "Everett bubble burst." By the spring of 1896, most of the miners had left Monte Cristo. Trump suffered both from a shortage of workers and reduced business, although he had been one of the few people to make money in Monte Cristo. Trump prepared for the bubble burst by funding two miners in the Yukon, Canada, in exchange for them staking a claim for him. In July 1897, the Klondike Gold Rush began after boats loaded with gold arrived in San Francisco and Seattle. Thousands of people rushed to the area in hopes of making a fortune. Trump sold off most of his property in Monte Cristo a few weeks later and moved back to Seattle.
In Seattle, Trump opened a new restaurant at 207 Cherry Street. Business was so good that he paid off the mortgage in four weeks. Meanwhile, on 7 July, the two miners whom Trump had funded staked his claim at Hunker Creek, a tributary of the Klondike. After spending $15 to register the claim, they sold half of it for $400 the next day. A week later, another miner sold it for $1,000. On 20 September, they staked a second claim, at Deadwood Creek. Half of it was sold in October for $150, while the other half was sold in December for $2,000. It is, however, unknown if Trump ever received any money from there. By early 1898, he had made enough money to go to the Yukon himself.
He bought all the necessary supplies, sold off his remaining properties in Monte Cristo and Seattle, and transferred his 40 acres in the Pine Lake Plateau to his sister Louise. In 1900, Louise sold the property for $250. In the winter following Trump's departure from Monte Cristo, the town suffered some of the worst avalanches and floods in its short history, and this time, Rockefeller refused to reconstruct the almost vital railroad to Everett.
Yukon Gold Rush; Trump's hotels and brothels
According to Blair's account, when Trump left for the Yukon, he had no plans to do actual mining. He likely travelled the White Pass route, which included the notorious "Dead Horse trail", so named because drivers whipped animals of transport until they dropped dead on the trail and were left to decompose. In the spring of 1898, Trump and another miner named Ernest Levin opened a tent restaurant along the trail. Blair writes that "a frequent dish was fresh-slaughtered, quick-frozen horse".In May 1898, Trump and Levin moved to Bennett, British Columbia, a town known for prospectors building boats in order to travel to Dawson. In Bennett, Trump and Levin opened the Arctic Restaurant and Hotel, which offered fine dining, lodging and sex in a sea of tents. The Arctic was also originally housed in a tent, but demand for the hotel and restaurant grew until it occupied a two-story building. A letter to the Yukon Sun newspaper described the Arctic:
The Arctic House was one of the largest and most extravagant restaurants in that region of the Klondike, offering fresh fruit and ptarmigan in addition to the staple of horse meat. The Arctic was open 24 hours a day and advertised "Rooms for ladies", which included beds and scales for measuring gold dust. The local detachment of North-West Mounted Police were known to tolerate vice so long as it was conducted discreetly.
In 1900, the White Pass and Yukon Route, a railroad between Skagway, Alaska and Whitehorse, Yukon, was completed. Trump founded the White Horse Restaurant and Inn in Whitehorse. They moved the building by barge, relocated on Front Street, and were operational by June.
The new restaurant, which included one of the largest steel ranges in the area, prepared 3,000 meals per day and had space for gambling. Despite the enormous financial success, Trump and Levin began fighting due to Levin's drinking. They broke up their business relationship in February 1901, but reconciled in April. Around that time, the local government announced the suppression of prostitution, gambling and liquor, though the crackdown was delayed by businessmen until later that year. In light of this impending threat to his business operation, Trump sold his share of the restaurant to Levin and left the Yukon. In the months that followed, Levin was arrested for public drunkenness and sent to jail, and the Arctic was taken over by the Mounties. The restaurant burned down in the Whitehorse fire of 1905. Blair wrote that "once again, in a situation that created many losers, managed to emerge a winner."