Trump family


Trump is a German and German-American surname originating in the Electoral Palatinate, Holy Roman Empire, today in modern Germany.
While the surname Trump is found throughout Germany, it has been recorded variously as Drumb, Tromb, Tromp, Trum, Trumpff, and Dromb in Kallstadt since the 17th century. Family members still live in the region in southwestern Germany.
Individuals with this surname came to the United States in the 19th century, including Charlotte Louisa Trump's son Johann Heinrich Heinz, the father of Henry J. Heinz, the founder of the Heinz company.

History

Trump is a German surname derived from a word that was used to refer both to :wikt:drum|drums and to :wikt:trumpet|trumpets. The name is on record in Kallstadt from the 17th century.
Gwenda Blair suggests the family may be descended from an itinerant lawyer, Hanns Drumpf, who settled in Kallstadt in 1608 and whose descendants changed their name from Drumpf to Trump during the Thirty Years' War of the early 1600s. However, this is not in accordance with data provided by German genealogists. Journalist Kate Connolly, visiting Kallstadt, found several variations in spelling of the surname in the village archives but her article does not note "Drumpf". There are no indications that other spellings of the name, including Trumpf, could be related to the Trumps.
in the Brooklyn Eagle, February 1950
Johannes Trump from the nearby village Bobenheim am Berg had established himself as a winegrower in Kallstadt by the late 17th century. Several of his descendants also were vintners in Kallstadt, one of many villages in the famous wine-growing region of the Palatinate. Charlotte Louisa Trump married Johann Georg Heinz, and their son Johann Heinrich Heinz emigrated from Kallstadt to the United States in 1840 and was the father of Henry J. Heinz, the founder of the Heinz company.

Friedrich Trump's American family branch

, grandfather of Donald Trump, was born 1869 in Kallstadt as Friedrich Trump. Friedrich Trump was one of six children of a winegrower and a second cousin of Henry J. Heinz, the founder of Heinz. Friedrich learned the profession of a barber. In 1885, at the age of 16, Friedrich emigrated from Kallstadt to the United States and anglicized his name to Frederick in 1892 when he became a U.S. citizen.
In March 1894 Trump 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. During the Alaska Gold Rush, he amassed a fortune by catering to the needs of gold seekers on their way to the region, providing alcohol, restaurants and hotels with special suites for prostitutes.
During a visit to Kallstadt, Frederick was accused of having left the country to avoid military service and was deprived of his Bavarian citizenship, later being banished from Germany for the same offence. As he had not served the mandatory military duty of two years in the Kingdom of Bavaria, his emigration was deemed illegal.
During the visit, Trump fell in love with Elisabeth Christ and married her in 1902. She was also a native of Kallstadt, and born as the daughter of Philipp and Marie Christ. Frederick sold his business and settled with Elizabeth in New York City. Elisabeth soon became homesick, and they returned to Germany. Trump tried unsuccessfully to regain his residency. To avoid deportation he wrote to Prince Luitpold, but was refused due to his lack military service. On 1 July 1905 they boarded the SS Pennsylvania and returned to the U.S. Frederick and Elisabeth were the parents of Elizabeth Trump, real estate developer Fred Trump and physicist John G. Trump. Frederick died of the Spanish flu on May 30, 1918.
Fred Trump was one of the biggest real estate developers in New York. Using their inheritance, Fred and his mother Elizabeth founded E. Trump & Son. Fred married Mary MacLeod, a native of Tong, a small village near Stornoway, in the Western Isles of Scotland. She was the daughter of fisherman Malcolm MacLeod and Mary MacLeod. At age 17, she immigrated to the United States and started working as a maid in New York City. Fred and Mary met in New York and married in 1936, settling together in Queens. Mary became a U.S. citizen in 1942. Fred was the father of Donald Trump, who became president of the real estate company in 1971, and renamed it the Trump Organization. Fearing that anti-German sentiments during and after World War II would negatively affect his business, Fred began claiming Swedish descent. The falsehood was repeated by Fred's son Donald to the press and in The Art of the Deal, where he claimed that his grandfather Friedrich "came here from Sweden as a child". In the same book, Donald also said that his father was born in New Jersey. Trump later said,
"My father is German. Right? Was German. And born in a very wonderful place in Germany, and so I have a great feeling for Germany." Trump's father was born in the Bronx, New York. Donald Trump has said that he is "proud" of his German heritage, having served as grand marshal of the 1999 German-American Steuben Parade in New York City. While walking through the city and seeing Trump Tower, Donald Trump recalled saying: "This is a long way from Kallstadt."
Stories about famous emigrants are common in the region, where many people have relations abroad. In 2015, a Kallstadt filmmaker produced a documentary in which Trump promised to visit Kallstadt. The media interest in the region increased with Trump's election, but the local reaction was mixed, as "The villagers used to have a better opinion of Donald Trump, before he started his boisterous campaign." There is not much interest in becoming a place of pilgrimage for Trump aficionados; unrelated tourism is already flourishing.

Family tree

President Donald Trump has married three times, to Ivana Zelníčková, Marla Maples and Melania Knauss.
President Trump has five children of whom four are adult children from two previous marriages: Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump with Ivana Trump, and Tiffany Trump with Marla Maples. Trump has one son with Melania Trump, Barron, born on March 20, 2006. He is the first pre-teen son to live in the White House since John F. Kennedy Jr. arrived as an infant in 1961. All three of his children with Ivana Trump were executive vice presidents at the Trump Organization until Trump was elected president. Tiffany Trump is a recent college graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, her father's alma mater.

Religious affiliations

The original Trump family in Germany are Lutheran members of the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate, although that region has been overwhelmingly Calvinist since Frederick III, Elector Palatine introduced the Reformed faith in the mid 16th century. Members of the family's American branch, beginning with Mary Anne McLeod, tend to be Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed or adherents of other Reformed denominations. Donald Trump's parents belonged to the Reformed Church in America, although he was confirmed at one of the Presbyterian Church congregations himself. This matter of membership, like in case of many American Protestants, does not play a big role since he attends services of both denominations and other ones that are part of the Reformed tradition, and sometimes even some that subscribe to other Protestant branches.
In 2016, Donald Trump visited Bethesda-by-the-Sea, an Episcopal Church, for a Christmas service. Melania Trump is, like most Slovenians, Roman Catholic. Ivanka Trump practices Judaism, having converted upon marrying Jared Kushner.