page_title: Mary Anne MacLeod Trump
section_title: Immigration to the United States
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Anne MacLeod Trump / Immigration to the United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of w:Fred Trump from the w:Brooklyn Eagle
context_page_description: Mary Anne Trump was a Scottish-American homemaker and philanthropist known for being the mother of Donald Trump and the wife of real estate developer Fred Trump. Born in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, UK, she emigrated to the United States in 1930 and became a naturalized citizen in 1942. She raised five children with her husband and lived in the New York area.
context_section_description: With several siblings having already established themselves there and in Canada, Mary Anne 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. She was one of tens of thousands of young Scots who left for the United States 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 $765 in 2019), MacLeod lived with her older sister Christina Matheson on Long Island 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 one account has 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 the course of her life and spoke Gaelic when she did.
caption: Fred Trump, c. 1950
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