Trump, Friedrich, 1869-1918

Frederick Trump (born Friedrich Trump; German: [fʁi:dʁɪç tʁʊmp]; March 14, 1869 – May 30, 1918) was a German-American businessman. He was the patriarch of the Trump family and the paternal grandfather of the 45th and 47th U.S. president, Donald Trump. Born and raised in Kallstadt, Germany, 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 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 purportedly immigrated to the United States in order to evade conscription, the Bavarian Government stripped him of his citizenship in 1905. Consequently, he returned to the United States with his family. Trump worked as a barber and manager of a hotel and was beginning to acquire real estate in Queens when he died in the 1918 flu pandemic.