THOUGH he has been a huge name for many years in the US, it is probably fair to say that most Scots only learned of Donald Trump’s Scottish roots when he said he would build his golf course in Scotland in tribute to his mother Mary Anne Macleod.

Since then he has had a fraught relationship with Scotland, gaining planning permission for the Trump International Links in controversial style, picking a fight with Alex Salmond over the wind turbines planned for near his course, and then buying Turnberry only for it to be taken off the Open Championship rota because of his statements against Muslims.

The same remarks also cost him his honorary degree from Robert Gordon University, and prompted First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to kick him out of business network GlobalScot.

So how Scottish is Donald Trump and how do people on his mother’s home island view him?

Trump’s second and latest visit to his mother’s original home took place in 2008, when he was en route to Aberdeen for the planning inquiry into his Menie project.

In typical Trump style, he said the establishment at the Menie Estate in Aberdeenshire would be the “best golf course in the world”. It’s not, but it is a very fine course designed by Dr Martin Hawtree and is a genuine tribute to the mother to whom he was devoted.

Perhaps curiously, or maybe out of respect for her wish to be a private person, Donald Trump does not mention his mother much in his memoirs, and on the biography page of his campaign website neither parent is named but his five children are. On his company website, his father is mentioned but not Mary Anne.

That is passing strange because Trump has acknowledged in print that he owes much to the mother he clearly loved and whom he called “wonderful”.

In his memoir The Art of the Deal, Trump wrote: “Looking back, I realise now that I got some of my sense of showmanship from my mother. She always had a flair for the dramatic and the grand. She was a very traditional housewife, but she also had a sense of the world beyond her.”

The National’s revelation on Saturday that Mrs Trump emigrated legally to the US on May 11, 1930, with just $50 in her purse surprised many people who believed the legend that Mary Anne met Donald’s father Fred while on holiday.

It did not surprise many on the Isle of Lewis, where she lived until the age of 17.

However, it may have surprised Donald Trump himself. On the homepage of Trumpgolfscotland.com, he states: “My Mother Mary MacLeod was from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. She grew up in a simple croft until she landed in Manhattan at the age of 20 and her first language was Gaelic.”

As The National has shown (and today we publish online the shipping list below to prove it - Mary MacLeod is number 5), his mother was from Tong and she landed in New York, going straight to Long Island, the day after her 18th birthday on May 11, 1930.



Family dates and places can often be confused when it all happened so long ago, but there is no doubt that Mary Anne Macleod emigrated in 1930 to the US, where her three sisters were already resident and where she married Fred Trump in January, 1936.

She came back to Lewis on numerous occasions and took Donald with her once – probably in March, 1953 when she flew to London and then travelled on to Stornoway. That would coincide with an early memory of Donald Trump that his mother watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth on television.

Mary Anne was on the island again in 1957, having travelled to Prestwick, and she and her daughter Judge Maryanne Barry were frequent visitors over the years. Judge Barry is particularly well-liked on Lewis, not least because she donated £150,000 to a local care home. Not surprisingly, she accompanied her brother Donald on the 2008 trip.

As The National has shown, through Mary Anne’s sisters and brothers – nine in all, most of whom had children – Donald Trump has a number of full cousins living both in the US and on Lewis.

Two of them still live in Tong in the modern house that replaced the original 1860 croft house on the site, a house that Malcolm and Mary Macleod – grandparents of Donald – moved into in 1895 following the departure to Steinish of the previous occupant, Malcolm Smith.

Occupation of 5 Tong later passed to Malcolm Macleod’s son-in-law Malcolm Murray, and his sons William and Alasdair – both in their seventies – still live at that address. The National approached the cousins in Tong but we were politely told “we’re not talking to anybody.”

A similar reluctance to talk about Trump was in evidence elsewhere in Tong and in Stornoway. It’s not that there is disrespect for him, it’s just that he is not seen as a real product of Lewis.

Retired teacher George Moodie, originally from Motherwell but resident on Lewis since 1968, said: “I don’t think him being a candidate will make any difference to people here. None at all.”

The reaction to Donald Trump is also underwhelming in Stornoway.

One passer-by listening to The National interviewing people opined: “Don’t know why you are bothering – nobody here really cares.”

On a day visit to the town, that would appear to be true.

Stornoway Library, for instance, sees no need for a separate section on Trump, but their very helpful staff found the cutting from the Stornoway Gazette about Trump’s 2008 visit.

In the story, Trump said he would look into investing in Lews Castle, a Victorian-era home that had fallen into disrepair and is now restored as a museum at a cost of £13.5m – none of which was Trump money.

The article quoted Trump saying: “I was here many, many years ago with my mother as a young child and I haven’t been back since because

I’ve been so busy working, having some fun in New York. Let’s put it that way.”

Angus MacNeil MP told the newspaper: “It is great that he is coming back to the land of his ancestors. He might want to complement his development on the east coast with one on the west coast.”

He did – only it was Turnberry, not Tong, that gained the Trump millions.

In that same story, Trump gave his views on being half-Scottish. “I do feel Scottish," he said. "But don’t ask me to define that, there was something very strong from my mother.”

The brevity of his visit to Lewis – three hours in total – was noted. Christine MacDonald, who has lived in Tong since 1972, said: “He was here for about 15 minutes a while back and he said he would be back, but he has never been back.

“I notice he has calmed down a bit in the last week or two, but he is still a bit of a blabbermouth.”

Tim Durbin, 43, the American-born manager of the post office in Stornoway, recently told Reuters: “People here like proof, and anything less than that is suspect. There would certainly be lots of talk about him after he left, but the talk would be subdued and the laughter gentle.”

Colin Murray, a visitor to Stornoway who left the Isles many years ago, told The National: “The good thing about Trump is that he is putting his own money into his campaign and so he doesn’t need to answer to anybody. The bad thing is that he talks too much, and anybody that does that will always talk themselves into trouble.”

Standing outside Stornoway Library, Calum MacLeod, 74, said: “There’s a lot of people looking forward to the research that is being done into his relatives because they think there might be a fortune in it and everyone will be claiming to be a relative of Donald Trump.

“He is supposed to be paying for the campaign himself, but is he really? It’s an awful lot of money to bet on what most people would think is a shaky wicket for him.”

Brian Jones, 55, originally from Fife, said: “I haven’t heard many people talking about him and the fact he is from Lewis.

“Usually around here people say they knew an aunt or uncle or a grandfather of somebody, but not many people claim that connection with Donald Trump. Not many people are remotely interested in him.”

His pronouncements during the campaign on Muslims and immigrants have turned off many islanders. Angus MacLeod, 51, said: “The fewer people that know his mother’s from Lewis, the better.”

Speaking yesterday, Lewis man Donald MacLeod – “capital L, makes a big difference,” he said – was sure that having a presidential candidate whose mother hailed from the island would create interest across the world, and not just in the US, but not bother the folk of Lewis too much.

He said: “The proof is The National’s story about Mrs Trump emigrating rather than being on holiday when she met Mr Trump.

“I’ve been following the reaction online and it has certainly caused a rumpus, but hardly anyone on Lewis was surprised.

“You proved what they knew all along: that she emigrated in search of a better life, like so many people did at that time.”