Elizabeth Christ Trump

Elisabeth Christ was born in Kallstadt, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire, the daughter of Philipp Christ and Anna Maria (née Anthon). The family owned a small vineyard. However, the income provided by that was not adequate to meet their needs, and Philipp Christ worked as a tinker repairing and polishing old utensils and selling pots and pans. He ran his trade from his house on Freinsheimer Strasse in Kallstadt, which was just across the street from the home of Katharina Trump, an elderly widow who lived with her six children, including Frederick.

Katharina Trump's son, Frederick Trump, emigrated to North America in 1885 at the age of 16 and made his fortune with restaurants and brothels in the Klondike Gold Rush in northwest Canada. When he returned to Germany in 1901, he wooed Elisabeth over the objections of his mother, who felt that her prosperous son could and should find a bride from a wealthier and more refined family than that of Elisabeth.

Nonetheless, Frederick and Elisabeth married on 26 August 1902. He was 33 years of age at the time and she was 21. Friedrich and Elisabeth moved to New York and they set up house in an apartment in the predominantly German quarter of Morrisania in the Bronx. Elizabeth (as her name was spelled in the United States) kept house, while Frederick worked as barber and manager of a restaurant-hotel. Their first child, Elisabeth, was born on April 30, 1904.

Despite living in a German neighborhood, Elizabeth was homesick. The family returned to Kallstadt in 1904, selling their assets in America. As the Bavarian authorities suspected he had left Germany to avoid conscripted service in the Imperial Army, Frederick could not remain in Germany, so the family returned to the United States in 1905.

Their second child, Fred, was born, and they set up house on 177th Street in the Bronx. After Elizabeth gave birth to her third child, John, the family moved to Queens, where Frederick began to develop real estate. In 1918, he died of influenza during the 1918 flu pandemic, leaving an estate valued at $31,359 (or approximately equivalent to $432,885 in 2024).

Trump was considered the matriarch of the Trump family. She remained close to her son Fred for her entire life.