"Donald Trump’s Immigrant Mother"
"n November of 1929, a seventeen-year-old Scotswoman, Mary Anne MacLeod, boarded the S.S. Transylvania in Glasgow, bound for New York City. With a high arching brow and deep, round eyes, MacLeod hailed from Tong, a remote fishing community in the parish of Stornoway, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Although the American stock market was in a freefall, Europe, in the shadow of war, was in no better shape. Scots had been emigrating for years, trying to find better opportunities.
In New York, MacLeod would find a well-established community of countrymen and women, including two of her sisters. She took more than one transatlantic trip before settling in New York, in the thirties. On at least two ship manifests and in the 1930 census, her occupation is listed as “maid” or “domestic.”
Mary MacLeod would eventually become Mary Trump, the mother of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for President. She died in 2000, long before her son’s political ascent but not before he became a business celebrity. This week, Trump visited his mother’s homeland, attending the official opening of a renovated Trump Turnberry, a golf course he owns in South Ayrshire. As global markets dropped precipitously in response to the Brexit referendum, just the day before, in which British citizens voted to break from the European Union, Trump praised the sprinkler systems on the course—“the highest level”—and Turnberry’s “incredible suites.” His Turnberry speech was almost entirely about his golf course, but he did talk about his mother, and how she had enjoyed eating dinner at Turnberry when she returned to Scotland to visit. “Her loyalty to Scotland was incredible,” he said. “She respected and loved the Queen.”
Like Barack Obama’s father, Trump’s mother was an immigrant. But Trump doesn’t often bring up his Scottish ancestry on the campaign trail. The “about” section of the Trump campaign’s Web site makes no mention of the Scottish-born matriarch, nor have his opponents reached much for the chance at a dig, given Trump’s campaign-defining comments about immigrants, at least those from Mexico or who are Muslims. Only Ted Cruz brought up Mrs. Trump’s Scottish birth, in a Republican Presidential debate in January.
A request for comment from representatives with the Trump campaign went unanswered.
Mary Anne MacLeod was born on May 10, 1912. Her father, Malcolm, was a fisherman on the remote Isle of Lewis, and he and his wife, Mary Smith, raised a large brood of children. Tong is still dominated by fishing and, increasingly, tourism, and many extended MacLeod relatives live in the area. None of Trump’s cousins wish to speak to the press, William Foulger, the secretary of the Stornoway Historical Society, said, nor does the owner of the family home" ~ More on the website.
"n November of 1929, a seventeen-year-old Scotswoman, Mary Anne MacLeod, boarded the S.S. Transylvania in Glasgow, bound for New York City. With a high arching brow and deep, round eyes, MacLeod hailed from Tong, a remote fishing community in the parish of Stornoway, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Although the American stock market was in a freefall, Europe, in the shadow of war, was in no better shape. Scots had been emigrating for years, trying to find better opportunities.
In New York, MacLeod would find a well-established community of countrymen and women, including two of her sisters. She took more than one transatlantic trip before settling in New York, in the thirties. On at least two ship manifests and in the 1930 census, her occupation is listed as “maid” or “domestic.”
Mary MacLeod would eventually become Mary Trump, the mother of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for President. She died in 2000, long before her son’s political ascent but not before he became a business celebrity. This week, Trump visited his mother’s homeland, attending the official opening of a renovated Trump Turnberry, a golf course he owns in South Ayrshire. As global markets dropped precipitously in response to the Brexit referendum, just the day before, in which British citizens voted to break from the European Union, Trump praised the sprinkler systems on the course—“the highest level”—and Turnberry’s “incredible suites.” His Turnberry speech was almost entirely about his golf course, but he did talk about his mother, and how she had enjoyed eating dinner at Turnberry when she returned to Scotland to visit. “Her loyalty to Scotland was incredible,” he said. “She respected and loved the Queen.”
Like Barack Obama’s father, Trump’s mother was an immigrant. But Trump doesn’t often bring up his Scottish ancestry on the campaign trail. The “about” section of the Trump campaign’s Web site makes no mention of the Scottish-born matriarch, nor have his opponents reached much for the chance at a dig, given Trump’s campaign-defining comments about immigrants, at least those from Mexico or who are Muslims. Only Ted Cruz brought up Mrs. Trump’s Scottish birth, in a Republican Presidential debate in January.
A request for comment from representatives with the Trump campaign went unanswered.
Mary Anne MacLeod was born on May 10, 1912. Her father, Malcolm, was a fisherman on the remote Isle of Lewis, and he and his wife, Mary Smith, raised a large brood of children. Tong is still dominated by fishing and, increasingly, tourism, and many extended MacLeod relatives live in the area. None of Trump’s cousins wish to speak to the press, William Foulger, the secretary of the Stornoway Historical Society, said, nor does the owner of the family home" ~ More on the website.
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