Posted on 09/20/2015 1:38:41 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
Canadians amused by the improbable presidential run of Donald Trump might be surprised to learn the role their own country played in shaping his story.
Trump's grandfather started the family fortune in an adventure that involved the Klondike gold rush, the Mounties, prostitution and twists of fate that pushed him to New York City.
Friedrich Trump had been in North America a few years when he set out for the Yukon, says an author who's just completed a new edition of her multi-generational family biography.
That Canadian chapter proved pivotal for the entrepreneurial German immigrant, says Gwenda Blair, author of The Trumps: Three Generations That Built An Empire.
"It allowed him to get together the nest egg he'd come to the United States for," the author and Columbia University journalism professor said in an interview.
"Whether he could've accumulated that much money somewhere else, in that short a period of time, as a young man with no connections, and initially not even English, is certainly ... unlikely."
He'd left Europe in 1885 at age 16, a barber's apprentice whose father died young.
Trump wanted a life outside the barber shop, far from the family-owned vineyards his ancestors had been working since they'd settled in Germany's Kallstadt region in the 1600s carrying the soon-altered surname Drumpf.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
Heck yeah. A businessman servicing a market.
“See a need, fill a need.”
Well there’s an obvious disqualified
Grandfather ran a whorehouse /s
Wait... Maybe that gives Trump the gene pool he needs to run the US government
That pretty much says....no women allowed in my mind...not that it was a whore house.
Mine shot a guy in the arse with a 30-40 Krag in Wyoming. Said it gutted him. The guy was stealing. Shot him as he went over the corral fence. Pappy went back to Missouri after that.
Sounded like a good way to enforce the law to me.
Tom Switch
North Dakota was the back of beyond at that time, The New World's Siberia. From the ND tourism site:
Scandinavian
Immigrants came to North Dakota from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Most settled in east and north-central North Dakota, along the main line of the Great Northern Railroad, beginning in the 1870s. Today, 193,000 people of Norwegian heritage live in North Dakota. About 38% of the state's population is of Scandinavian descent, with about 33% being Norwegian. The continent's largest Scandinavian event, Norsk Hostfest, is celebrated each fall in Minot.
German
Many people of German descent came from Russia in the 1880s and settled in south-central North Dakota. Many left for a variety of political and social reasons, with half of the German immigrants coming from Russia and the other half coming directly from Germany to the United States. The land they settled on was semi-arid and similar to that of the steppe in Russia and they used it for pasture and to grow small-grain crops, living in sod houses, similar to "semeljankas" in Russia. North Dakotans from German or Germans from Russia descent total about 43%.
Sgt Preston to the rescue!
I have relatives that voted for Democrats. I should be barred from public life.
Maybe Trump will learn, like Sen. Warren, that he has Indian ancestors, too!
LOL! Don’t be so hard on yourself. Remember, Reagan was originally a democrat too.
Cool. An all American rags to riches story.
“JFKs father Joe Kennedy was a gangster and prohibition rum runner.”
Precisely. The examples are numerous.
***and to grow small-grain crops,***
They also brought flax seed and accidentally also the Russian thistle seed (Tumbleweed).
Someone else brought the other curse, goathead sandburrs.
Don’t care...want Trump for president.
My dad drove a horse drawn beer wagon for Dutch Schultz. Oh the horror!! You don’t want to know about my ex wife’s family. The only thing my dad passed on to me from back then, was the love of beer.
Thanks for adding your perspective, and the anecdotes you’ve read up on about the Trump family, to this thread.
Can you post a link to the great thread that had all of the Trump family history info/links? (If you haven’t, already ;) TIA.
Canada makes some very beautiful hookers. So I’m told. Ahem. They live in igloos and ice fish. In summer.
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