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Trump made up some story on one single occasion about Scots in the family (I suspect he’s talking about his mom’s family).

The Trump family goes back to the Grandfather who packed up in the Pfalz area of Germany (central region) in 1885. It should be noted....he LEGALLY immigrated into the US...entering the front door, doing the paperwork, and passing the physical.

Frederick Trump, would take up the barbering profession in NY City for a couple of years, and then moved to Seattle....where he leased a restaurant building. Three years later....he opens a hotel in a mining area of Washington state, which makes some money. Then he takes off for Alaska for the Gold Rush, but instead of mining....he opens another restaurant, and eventually another hotel. Somewhere along the way, he also operated a brothel (which is an irritant in the legacy).

So, by 1902, this young man had grown awful business smart....made a fair amount of money, and just wanted to return to Germany after seventeen years in the US...and settle back into the Pfalz (Germany). Oddly, they didn’t take kindly to the fact that he’d avoided the military obligation, and eventually said that he could visit, but he could not stay. He was deemed...an American.

Frederick accepted this. I think if he’d stayed there and the Germans approved his situation...he would have been fairly wealthy and well-off in the local situation. Germans generally dislike this kind of disruption into their sense of a level playing field. Frederick Trump was competitive and business-smart.

Frederick comes back to Queens, NY...running a restaurant during this period and conducting some real estate investments. He dies in 1918 (the flu). His wife takes over the business (she was smart too), and the real estate concept took off in the 1920s for the family.

And I should note....this little village in the Pfalz where Fred came from....it’s also a village where the Heinz family (the ketchup family) came from.