Mary Anne MacLeod Trump

Raised in a Scottish Gaelic-speaking household, Mary was the youngest of ten children born to Malcolm Macleod (1866–1954) and Mary Ann Smith ( Smith; 1867–1963).

Her father was a crofter, fisherman and compulsory officer at Mary's school.

English was her second language, which she learned at the school she attended until secondary school.

Her paternal grandparents were Alexander MacLeod and Ann MacLeod; her maternal grandparents were Donald Smith and Mary MacAulay.

They were from the locations of Vatisker and South Lochs, respectively.

Donald died at sea aged 34 when his sailing ship sank, a common fate for men in the region which was dependent on fishing.

Some of the family's earlier generations had been forced off their land as part of the Highland Clearances.

According to one genealogical account, displaced families in Mary's village lived in "human wretchedness" while nearby farmable land was used for sheep.

Local historians have said properties at the time were "indescribably filthy", and that families in the area lived austere lives as fishers, farmers and peat diggers.

The outbreak of World War I weakened the area's economy and reduced the male population further.

Mary Anne MacLeod was born in a pebbledashed croft house owned by her father since 1895 in the village of Tong, Lewis, Scotland.

Mary Anne Trump (' MacLeod'''; Màiri Anna Nic Leòid ; May 10, 1912 – August 7, 2000) was the wife of real-estate developer Fred Trump and the mother of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.

With several siblings having already established themselves there, MacLeod may have first visited the United States for a short stay in December 1929.

Born in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, Mary Trump emigrated to the U.S. in 1930 and became a naturalized citizen in March 1942.

She raised five children with her husband and lived in the New York area.

She was issued immigration visa number 26698 at Glasgow on February 17, 1930.

In the mid-1930s, while Mary Anne was living with her sister in Queens, she met Fred Trump—already a property developer and builder—at a party; on a subsequent visit to Scotland, she told her family that she had met her future husband.

Having obtained a U.S. Re-entry Permit—only granted to immigrants intending to stay and gain citizenship —she returned to Scotland on the SS Cameronia on September 12, 1934.

She was recorded as living in New York by April 1935 in the 1940 U.S. Census.

They married at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church on January 11, 1936, with George Arthur Buttrick officiating.

The wedding reception for 25 guests was held at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan.

They honeymooned in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

On April 5, 1937, she gave birth to their first child, Maryanne, followed by Fred C. Trump Jr. (1938–1981), Elizabeth (born 1942), Donald (born 1946), and Robert (1948–2020).

The final birth led to an emergency hysterectomy, which she barely survived.

The family lived in Jamaica, Queens, and later specifically in Jamaica Estates.

At first, the couple lived in the house of MacLeod's mother-in-law; however, by 1940, the couple, having moved out, had begun an upwardly mobile existence, having taken on a Scottish domestic servant for their own household.

MacLeod generally worked as a housewife within the family, but sometimes helped with her husband's real estate business, such as collecting coins from laundry machines in family-owned apartment buildings.

Though the 1940 census form filed by Mary Anne and her husband, Fred Trump, stated that she was a naturalized citizen, she did not actually become one until March 10, 1942.

However, there is no evidence that she violated any immigration laws prior to her naturalization, as she frequently traveled internationally and was afterwards able to re-enter the U.S. MacLeod returned to her home area in Scotland often during the course of her life and spoke Gaelic when she did.

On May 2, MacLeod left Glasgow on board the RMS Transylvania arriving in New York City on May 11 (one day after her 18th birthday).

She declared she intended to become a U.S. citizen and would be staying permanently in America.

She was one of tens of thousands of young Scots who left for the U.S. or Canada during this period, Scotland having suffered badly the consequences of the Clearances and World War I. The alien passenger list of the Transylvania lists her occupation as a domestic worker.

Arriving in the U.S. with $50 (equivalent to $887 in 2022), MacLeod lived with her older sister Christina Matheson on Long Island and worked as a domestic servant for at least four years.

One of these jobs appears to have been as a nanny for a well-to-do family in a New York suburb, but the position was eliminated due to economic difficulties caused by the Great Depression.

As a 2016 account in Scottish newspaper The National put it, she "started life in America as a dirt-poor servant escaping the even worse poverty of her native land."

MacLeod raised her children in the Presbyterian faith of her upbringing; on January 20, 2017, incoming U.S. President Donald Trump took his inaugural oath of office using a copy of the Revised Standard Version Bible given to him by his mother in 1955 when he graduated from a Presbyterian Sunday school.

MacLeod drove a Rolls-Royce that bore the vanity plates "MMT", the initials of her name, Mary Macleod Trump.

MacLeod also acted as a volunteer in a hospital and was involved in school activities and charities, including the betterment of those with cerebral palsy and efforts to improve the lives of intellectually disabled adults.

The Trumps were active in the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Lighthouse for the Blind, among other charities.

MacLeod had a significant role at the Women's Auxiliary of Jamaica Hospital and likewise at the Jamaica Day Nursery.