Friedrich Trump

• Wikipedia
• Birth: March 14, 1869 Kallstadt, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
• Death: March 30, 1918 (49) Queens, New York, USA

Friedrich Trump's family were winegrower's from Kallstadt, and likely descendants of Hans Drumpf.

• Familypedia

Friedrich Trump (1869-1918) was a native of Kallstadt, Germany. He arrived in New York City in 1885 at age 16. He found work as a barber, and for six years, he shared a small apartment with his sister and brother-in-law.

In 1891, at 22, Friedrich decided to go west to seek his fortune. He moved to Seattle and opened a small late-night restaurant that catered to the clientele of the local saloons, brothels, and opium dens.

When the Klondike Gold Rush began, Trump left the red-light district and moved to the edge of town, where he opened a new eatery to serve the thousands of fortune-seekers on their way to the gold fields.

In 1898, he and a partner followed the gold rush north to British Columbia. They set up a tent on the heavily-traveled Dead Horse Trail and served hot meals to the prospectors.

Business was so good that they moved to a two-story building in the boom town of Bennett and opened the New Arctic Restaurant and Hotel. The building, it is said, loomed tall among a sea of tents.

The New Arctic was the best facility around, offering unaccustomed luxuries: excellent accommodations, a saloon that never closed, and a restaurant featuring a wide range of game, fish, fowl, and fresh fruits and vegetables.

When a new railroad bypassed Bennett, Trump relocated to Whitehorse, a larger boom town, and opened the Whitehorse Restaurant and Inn. The new facility was open around the clock and served 3,000 meals a day.

In 1901, after gold was discovered in Alaska and the wave of prospectors surged west, Trump cashed out. He sold his Canadian investments and returned to Germany. He was 32 and a successful businessman with cash aplenty.

In 1902, he married Elizabeth Christ, a childhood friend from Kallstadt. In Febryary 1905 a Royal decree ordered Friedrich Trump to leave Bavaria and never come back after he failed to do military service. They returned to New York City and bought a home in Queens. Their son Fred was born there in 1905.

Trump Sr. was just 49 when he died of pneumonia during the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918. At the time of Fritt Trump's death his net worth was about $32,000, which translates into over $500,000 in modern currency. Elisabeth Christ Trump and her fifteen-year-old son, Fred Jr. went into the real estate and building business, laying the foundation for the Empire.

Sources

• Rocky Smith
• Trump, Friedrich, record file of the Königliche Bezirks-amt Dürkheim regarding failure to serve in the military, illegal emigration, removal of citizenship and expulsion from Bavaria, dated 4 August 1904. (alternate link to original record at the archived: https://www.landeshauptarchiv.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Gemeinsame_D...

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As Fred Trump recounted it many years afterward, his father turned to him and said he felt sick. They walked home, and the older man went to bed. "Then he died," Fred Trump said later. "Just like that. It seemed so sudden to me." At first, he said, he couldn't believe that as the parade was marching down Jamaica Avenue, his father was lying dead upstairs. "It just didn't seem real," he said. "I wasn't that upset. You know how kids are. But I got upset watching my mother crying and being so sad. It was seeing her that made me feel bad, not my own feelings about what had happened.

The cause of death was listed on the death certificate as "plena pneumonia, dextra et sinistra": full pneumonia, right and left lungs. Five days later, infected lungs caused the death of Frederick Trump's brother-in-law Fred Schuster. To the Trumps, it seemed a sad coincidence. By the end of the summer, though, it was clear that both men had almost certainly been early victims or what came to be known as "Spanish influenza." Ultimately, the influenza epidemic of 1918 claimed twenty-one million lives - six million more than all of World War I.