Donald Trump's Canadian (and Seattle) family connection

The Donald's grandfather came over from Germany and spent a good bit of time in the Canadian Yukon Territories and in Seattle.

From the Canadian National Post:

Yukon roadkill, prostitution and gold: How Canada played a role in building the Trump family empire
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.

Speaking of the Grandfather

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.
He sailed in steerage to join his sister in New York.

Within five years he’d anglicized his name to Frederick; moved to the young timber town of Seattle; and amassed enough cash to buy tables and chairs for a restaurant.

His next big move was heralded by the front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of July 17, 1897, and its exclamatory headline: “Gold! Gold! Gold!”

In the Yukon - ever the entrepreneur:

In his three years in Canada, Trump opened the Arctic Restaurant and Hotel in two locations with a partner — first on Bennett Lake in northern B.C., and then moving it to Whitehorse, Yukon.

Their two-storey wood-framed establishment gained a reputation as the finest eatery in the area, Blair said — offering salmon, duck, caribou, and oysters.

It offered more than food.

“The bulk of the cash flow came from the sale of liquor and sex,” Blair wrote. She cited newspaper ads referring obliquely to prostitution — mentioning private suites for ladies, and scales in the rooms so patrons could weigh gold if they preferred to pay for services that way.

Sounds like a fun read and looks like The Donald has sidestepped the shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations (here, here and here) curse that hits so many other people.

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on September 19, 2015 8:05 PM.

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