Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 37 on 20/03/2008.

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Donald Trump

The American tycoon is currently and somewhat controversially re-establishing a link with Scotland. And he is from Scottish family.

It’s hardto image the brash loud and very American businessman Donald Trump being rocked to sleep while listening to a soothing Gaelic lullaby – but it might well have happened.

Aglance back through the entrepreneur’s harsh, uncompromising and at times tragic ancestry might in part explain his gritty determination to make a success of his life.

For Trump, presently in the centre of a controversial project to build a luxury golf complex in an area of north east Scotland in close proximity to a noted bird sanctuary, is not only the son of a Scotswoman, he’s the offspring of a woman who was brought up on the Hebridean island of Lewis where life historically has been harsh and where Gaelic would have been widely spoken.

His mother Mary Anne MacLeod emigrated from Lewis to America and met and married Frederick Trump, of German origin. At that time, MacLeod was the most common surname in the west coast island of Lewis and is well represented there to this day.

Both her parents were Gaelic speakers and it is highly likely that Mary Anne would have spoken it, and taken it with her to America.

It’s not inconceivable, therefore, that she passed on song and story to Donald as a boy.

Mary Anne was born in the village of Tong, in the parish of Stornoway on 10th May 1912, to a fisherman named Malcolm MacLeod and his wife, Mary Smith, married in 1891.

Mary Smith MacLeod lived to the age of 96, dying in 1963. At that time her address was No. 5, Tong; she had been born, married and die.....

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By Sally Toms

Section : Scotland Genealogy

Page number : 63