…I Squatted, worked as a Domestic Servant (Nanny), first issued a U.S immigration visa number 26698, naturalized as an American after 12 years, raised five children with my husband
*‘I was born in the village of Tong on the Isle of Lewis, raised in a Gaelic-speaking household as the youngest of ten children of Gaelic Scottish parents’
*‘My maternal grandfather, Donald Smith died at sea aged 34 when his sailing ship sank, a common fate for men in the region dependent on fishing’
*“I met and fell in love with Fred Trump-already a property developer and builder at a party. I told my family I found my future husband. We got married at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church on the Upper East Side”– MARY Anne
*BY FELIX KAINE/Tourism Editor, New York, NAIJA STANDARD NEWSPAPER INC USA
IN a documented report, the biological mother of the 45th/47th President of the United States, and four other children, Mary Ann Trump narrated how she worked as a domestic servant (Nanny) in New York for years just to survive, since she had a paltry $50. She did not shy away from her immigrant’s dream which has been the same aspiration of migrants into ‘God’s own country but many presently called names by the basis of their looks, skin, accent and their original nationalities.
Mary Anne (née MacLeod; Scottish Gaelic was a Scottish and American socialite and philanthropist who was the wife of American real-estate developer Fred Trump.
Born a native Scottish Gaelic-speaker in the Outer Hebrides, MacLeod immigrated to the United States in 1930 and became a naturalized citizen in March 1942. She raised five children in conjunction with her husband and lived in New York City.
In a nutshell, in 1930, an 18-year-old immigrant arrived in New York with just $50. Her name was Mary Anne MacLeod. She left a poor village in Scotland, worked as a domestic servant, and built a life in America. Years later, she married Fred Trump and became the mother of Donald Trump.
From immigrant worker to First Family matriarch, her story is a reminder of how deeply immigration is woven into America’s hist
Mary Anne MacLeod was born on May 10, 1912, in the village of Tong on the Isle of Lewis. Raised in a Gaelic-speaking household, she was the youngest of ten children born to Gaelic Scottish parents, Mary MacLeod (née Smith; 1867–1963) and Malcolm MacLeod (1866–1954). 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 Anne MacLeod; her maternal grandparents were Donald Smith and Mary MacAulay. They were from 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. Many of her siblings would also migrate, both to the United States and the traditional destination for Highland Scots in the period, Canada
With several siblings having already established themselves there, MacLeod may have first visited the United States for a short stay in December 1929. She was issued immigration visa number 26698 at Glasgow on February 17, 1930. 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.
Donald’s mother 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 $945 in 2024), MacLeod lived with her older sister Christina Matheson in Astoria, Queens 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. “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.
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 her life and spoke Gaelic when she did.
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. They married at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church on the Upper East Side 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 (1937–2023), 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 Mary Anne 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, but by 1940 had become upwardly mobile, with their own household featuring a Scottish domestic servant.
According to family biographer Harry Hurt III, MacLeod spent time collecting coins from laundry machines in apartment buildings owned by the family; this has also been claimed by MacLeod’s children about Fred Trump’s mother, Elizabeth, as well as by Donald about himself.
Mary Anne MacLeod Trump died on August 7, 2000, at the age of 88 in Long Island Jewish Medical Center, passing away about a year after her husband, Fred Trump.
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