Mary Anne MacLeod grew up in the poor fishing village of Tong in the Scottish Highlands.
He doesn't talk about it much, but President Trump's mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, grew up poor in the fishing village of Tong in the Scottish Highlands.
Inside Edition visited the tiny village and the home where MacLeod lived together with her parents and nine siblings. The home remains in the family.
Local historical writer Ian Stephen told Inside Edition that times were tough when MacLeod was growing up.
“This was not an easy place to make a living,” he said. “You have displaced communities; this is the aftermath of the First World War, between the wars, uneasy political times, and depression. So here we have someone who had very little choice but to try and make a new life."
In 1930, when she was only 17, MacLeod decided to pack her bags and move from her humble home all the way to New York City, where she planned to work as a maid. She left home with only $50 in her pocket and no plans to return.
She arrived on Ellis Island by ship. Immigration records described her as having fair hair, a fair complexion, blue eyes and standing 5-foot-8.
Nina Burleigh, author of “Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump's Women,” spoke to Inside Edition about the president’s mother. "She goes to work as a maid in the closest thing to an American castle that existed then, the Carnegie household. Andrew Carnegie was a Scot and there was a connection,” she said.
MacLeod lived in this building in Astoria, Queens, when she met real estate developer Fred Trump at a party. They quickly married in 1936 and went on to have five children, including now-President Trump.
The relationship between mother and son relationship reportedly wasn't always warm and fuzzy, though. He tends to avoid speaking about his mom's modest upbringing. "Up from the bootstraps isn't really his thing right?" said Burleigh. "The Trump name is synonymous with class. It's classy, it's royal. It's gilt it's gold."
After his inauguration, Trump prominently displayed a photo of his father in the Oval Office, but there was no sign of his mother initially, though he eventually he added one of her and paid tribute to her last Mother's Day.
"My mother was a great person. I learned so much from my mother. So much of what I’ve done and so much of what I’ve become is because of my mother,” he said.
Trump visited his mother's ancestral home in Scotland just once, in 2008, when he was looking for a spot to open a golf course. He spent only about 90 seconds inside the home before continuing on his business trip.
He spoke with the local press at the time, saying: "It’s nice to be here. My mother never lost her feeling for Scotland, she loved Scotland more than anything."
RELATED STORIES
