Passport application of Frederich Trump, 1896
In Seattle, Trump opened a new restaurant at 207 Cherry Street. Business was so good that he paid off the mortgage in four weeks. Meanwhile, on July 7, the two miners that Trump had funded staked his claim at Hunker Creek, a tributary of the Klondike. After spending $15 to register the claim, they sold half of it for $400 the next day. A week later, another miner sold it for $1,000.
[4]:77 On September 20, they staked a second claim, at Deadwood Cree. Half of it was sold in October for $150, while the other half was sold in December for $2,000. By early 1898, Trump had made enough money to go to the Yukon for himself.
[4]:79 He bought all the necessary supplies, sold off his remaining property in Monte Cristo and Seattle, and transferred his 40 acres in the Pine Lake Plateau to his sister Louise.
[4]:78 In 1900, Louise sold the property for $250.
[4]:80 In the years following Trump's departure from Monte Cristo, Rockefeller canceled plans for a railway through the town, and it subsequently experienced some of the worst avalanches and floods in its history.
[4]:79
Role in Yukon gold rush
Blair, the biographer, stated that after Trump left for the Yukon, he "had no plans to mine himself."
[4]:81 He likely travelled the White Pass route,
[4]:83 which included the notorious “Dead Horse trail”, so named because drivers whipped animals of transport until they literally dropped dead on the trail and were left to decompose. In the spring of 1898, Trump and another miner named Ernest Levin opened a tent restaurant along the trail. Blair wrote that "a frequent dish was fresh-slaughtered, quick-frozen horse."
[4]:84
In May 1898, Trump and Levin moved to
Bennett, British Columbia, a town known for prospectors building boats in order to travel to Dawson. In Bennett, Trump and Levin opened the Arctic Restaurant and Hotel, which offered fine dining and lodging in a sea of tents.
[4]:85
[10] The Arctic was originally housed in a tent itself, but demand for the hotel and restaurant grew until it occupied a two-story building.
[4][10] When describing the Arctic in a letter to the
Yukon Sun newspaper, [a journalist?] wrote: "For single men the Arctic has excellent accommodations as well as the best restaurant in Bennett, but I would not advise respectable women to go there to sleep as they are liable to hear that which would be repugnant to their feelings – and uttered, too, by the depraved of their own sex."
[4] The Arctic House was one of the largest and most decadent restaurants in that region of the Klondike, offering fresh fruit and
ptarmigan in addition to the staple of
horsemeat.
[10] The Arctic was open 24 hours a day and advertised "Rooms for ladies," which included beds and scales for measuring gold dust. The local Mounties were known to tolerate vice so long as it was conducted discreetly.
[4]:86
In 1900, the 150-mile-long
White Pass and Yukon Route, a railroad between Bennett and
Whitehorse, Yukon, was completed, allowing Trump to establish the White Horse Restaurant and Inn in Whitehorse.
[4]:87–88
[11] They moved the building by barge, relocated on Front Street, and were operational by June.
[4]:88–89 The new restaurant, which included one of the largest steel ranges in the area, prepared 3,000 meals per day and now included gambling. Despite the enormous financial success, Trump and Levin began fighting due to Levin’s drinking. They broke their business relationship in February 1901, but reconciled in April. Around that time, the local government announced suppression on prostitution, gambling and liquor, though the crackdown was delayed by businesspeople until later that year. In light of this impending threat to his business operation, Trump sold his share of the restaurant to Levin and left the Yukon.
[2][4]:90–91 In the months that followed, Levin was arrested for public drunkenness and sent to jail, and the Arctic was taken over by the Mounties.
[4]:92 The restaurant itself burned down in the Whitehorse fire of 1905.
[12] Blair wrote that "once again, in a situation that created many losers, [Trump] managed to emerge a winner."
[4]:93
Marriage and family
Portrait of Friedrich Trump's family,
from left to right: Fred, Frederick, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Christ, and John, 1918
Trump returned to Kallstadt in 1901 as a wealthy man. Blair, the biographer said that "the business of seeing his customers’ need for food, drink and female companionship had been good to him."
[4]:94 He quickly met and proposed to the neighbor's daughter, Elizabeth Christ (October 10, 1880 – June 6, 1966), who had been just 5 when he left.
[13][14] Trump’s mother disapproved of Christ because she saw Christ's family as being from a lower social standing. Despite this, they married on August 26, 1902, and moved to New York City.
[4]:95
In New York, Trump found work as a barber and a restaurant and hotel manager. They lived at 1006 Westchester Avenue in the German-speaking
Morrisania neighborhood of
the Bronx. Their daughter Elizabeth was born on April 30, 1904. Due to Elizabeth Sr.'s extreme homesickness, they returned to Germany later that year.
[4]:96 In May 1904, when he applied in New York for a U.S. passport to travel with his wife and his daughter, he listed his profession as "hotelkeeper".
[15] In Germany, Trump deposited into a bank his life’s savings of 80,000 marks, equivalent to $505,248 in 2016.
[4]:96
Elisabeth Christ & Friedrich Trump
Soon after returning, German authorities determined that Trump had emigrated from Germany to avoid his military-service obligations, and he was labeled a draft dodger.
[4]:98 On December 24, 1904 the Department of Interior announced an investigation to expel Trump from the country. Officially, they found that he had violated the Resolution of the Royal Ministry of the Interior number 9916, a 1886 law that punished emigration to North America to avoid military service with the loss of German citizenship.
[4]:99 For several months, he unsuccessfully petitioned the government to allow him to stay.
[4]:100
He and his family finally returned to New York on June 30, 1905.
[4]:102 Trump’s son
Fred was born on October 11, 1905, in
Queens, New York. The family lived at 539 East 177th Street. In 1907, his second son
John was born. Later that year they moved to
Woodhaven, Queens. While living in Queens, he opened a barber shop at 60
Wall Street in Manhattan.
[4]:110
Later life and death
In 1908, Trump bought real estate on
Jamaica Avenue in Woodhaven. Two years later, he moved his family into the building on the land and rented out several other rooms. He also worked as a hotel manager at the Medallion Hotel on
6th Avenue and
23rd Street.
[4]:112 He had plans to continue buying more land, but during
World War I, he was compelled to keep a low profile because Americans were suspicious of German-born citizens.
[4]:113–115
One day in May 1918, while walking with Fred, he suddenly felt extremely sick and was rushed to bed. The next day,
Memorial Day (May 27), he was dead. What was first diagnosed as
pneumonia turned out to be one of the early cases of the
1918 flu pandemic.
[4]:116
[16] He was 49 years old.
At his death his net holdings included a 2-story, 7-room home in Queens; 5 vacant lots; $4,000 in savings; $3600 in stocks; and 14 mortgages. Altogether his net value was $31,359 ($494,700 today).
[4]:118 Elizabeth Sr. and Fred continued his real estate projects under the
Elizabeth Trump & Son moniker.