Who is this person?

[Eva Elisabeth]

(12-27-2018 08:24 PM)Steve Wrote:  I thought the image of the man seemed familiar to me, so I admit that I used Google and found out who he was. Relax, I'm not going to ruin the trivia game and say who he was. But, as a historical accuracy nit-picker, I have to take issue with Eva calling him an "operator of brothels". One of the man's occupations was a hotel operator and the only legitimate historical source that I'm aware of that hints at the possibility of his involvement with prostitution is a review of one of his hotels in a local newspaper which said in part:

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

This man's hotel had more of a single-man clientele and he may have had arrangements with local prostitutes for his guests, but I don't think there's enough evidence to be sure based on the above quote.

I just thought I should clarify this in case "operator of brothels" sent somebody down a wrong alley of thinking.

Thanks, Steve - I purposely started out with the less familiar part of what made his fortune, also because I found it more interesting to learn. I will provide his story, and you will see. The restaurant/hotel business is so famous at least over here - I held back as I didn't want to make it too easy from the outset. I guess the brothel part is not welcome to be known that much. But it's pretty logical to make a fortune that way in that environment, no? And it's one of the oldest businesses of mankind, there are even brothels in the ruins of Pompeii. (And it's a good question, isn't it?)

---

So, hint #5: He made his fortune from hotels and "catering" in connection with gold.

---

... which actually paved the way for someone else.

---

Hint #6: I could also have posted the question here:
https://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussi...e-124.html

[Eva Elisabeth]

PS: If you ever come to Italy, don't miss the leftovers of Pompeii - so fascinating!! Anyway Italy is well worth a trip (most UNESCO World Heritage sites...).
https://theconversation-com.cdn.ampproje...peii-88853
Also fascinating the letters by eyewitness Plinius the Younger (and the movie based upon):
https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/vie...y-s-Letter

[Eva Elisabeth]

Hint #7: He bore the name of a president whom he "preceded".

[Anita]

Fredrick Trump, Donald Trump's grandfather. I think this is the man. I was in Yukon this past summer and took a tour about the Yukon gold rush. As I recall he made his money "servicing" the miners.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Kudos, Anita, well done!

Here goes his story:

"In 1885, Friedrich Trump [I would think his very original family name was the German term for "trump", "Trumpf"] stepped off a boat in lower Manhattan with a single suitcase. Only sixteen years old, he had left a note for his widowed mother on the kitchen table back in Kallstadt, a village in southwestern Germany, and slipped off in the middle of the night. He didn’t want to work in the family vineyard or get a job as a barber, the profession for which he’d been trained. He wanted to become rich, and America was the place to do it.

Friedrich wasted no time, and he did it by pushing the behavioral boundaries of his time. By the early 1890s, Friedrich had learned English; morphed from a skinny teenager into an adult man with a handlebar moustache; become a naturalized U.S. citizen, an easy matter at a time when there were no immigration quotas; changed the spelling of his name to the more American-sounding Frederick; and made his way to Seattle, a wide-open city filled with single rootless newcomers who’d arrived expecting to make their fortunes but found themselves facing the same uncertain economic prospects they’d wanted to leave behind.

A quick study, Trump headed for a prime location, the city’s red-light district, known as the Lava Beds. There he leased a tiny storefront restaurant named the Poodle Dog, which had a kitchen and a bar and advertised “private rooms for ladies”–code for prostitutes. It would allow the resourceful Trump, who renamed it the Dairy Restaurant, to offer the restless, frustrated public some right-now satisfaction in the form of food, booze and easily available sex.

Friedrich Trump's Seattle restaurant flourished, but he kept his ears open. In 1894, he heard that John D. Rockefeller, the wealthiest man in the world, was bankrolling a mining operation in a small town north of Seattle named Monte Cristo. Without delay, Trump scoped out the best location there, secured it by filing a bogus mineral claim, built a hotel on the parcel even though it didn’t actually belong to him, and began giving the customers, once again, exactly what they wanted: plenty to eat, lots to drink and of course women.

When Monte Cristo proved slow to deliver on its promise, Rockefeller publicly reiterated his support while secretly arranging an exit. In the summer of 1897, Trump also decided to cash out and return to Seattle—making him, along with Rockefeller, one of the few investors in Monte Cristo to end up winners rather than losers.

The reason for Trump’s departure was that steamers filled with Yukon gold had pulled into Puget Sound. Overnight, hordes of what were known as stampeders began heading north to the Yukon, hauling their picks and shovels on a perilous journey by foot across snow-covered mountain passes. But Trump had no intention of either hauling or digging. Instead he opened trailside restaurants—creating his own private gold rush by mining the would-be miners.   

In the New Arctic Restaurant and Hotel, which he opened in the raw new town of Bennett in May 1898, he again offered “private boxes” for ladies, facilities that included not only a bed, but a scale for weighing the gold dust used to pay for services. It was the best restaurant in town, one newspaper reported at the time, but added that it “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.”   

By June 1900, he was living in White Horse, a Yukon outpost at the end of the newly built railroad but hundreds of miles south of the gold fields, and he was the proprietor of yet another eatery, the Arctic Restaurant. Once again, he had chosen a prime location, across the street from the railroad depot; once again he had built on land for which he did not have a valid legal claim; and once again he was deploying the Trump formula of giving customers still in search of their first nugget something they could enjoy on the spot—a bar, gambling facilities and separate areas, curtained off with dark velvet,  for what were known as “sporting ladies.”

Trump didn’t know it, but the burst of prosperity in White Horse would be short-lived. Gold deposits in the Yukon were already played out, and the next round of stampeders would head west to newly discovered gold fields in Alaska.

But Trump did know that he was facing a more immediate and urgent problem—what was known at that time as “propriety” but today would be termed “political correctness.” In the spring of 1901, the North West Mounted Police superintendent who oversaw White Horse announced a plan to suppress gambling and liquor sales and to banish “the scarlet women” from the center of town.

Trump didn’t wait to find out whether the Arctic Restaurant could survive such a blow. Like many in the midst of a gold rush, he had made money; more rare, he had hung onto it. After selling off his interests, he left town with a hefty nest egg—once again emerging a winner from a situation where there would be no end of losers.

A year later, on a visit to his mother in Kallstadt, he became engaged to the girl next door, Elizabeth Christ, who had been only five when he left for America. After they wed, Trump brought her to New York and started over, working as a barber and a hotel and restaurant manager while keeping an eye out for the next big thing."

...for the rest of his story, please go here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Trump
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/...-is-121647

This is a 1887 photo:
   
Anita, you win an "American Dream" craft beer:
   
(Well worth enlarging the image...)

[RJNorton]

Kudos, Anita! That was a tough question. That was one interesting story, Eva!

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks, Roger. I have another one - and again, Google image search is NOT lege artist - this gentleman has often been "linked" to Lincoln. Who is/was he?
   

[Anita]

Thanks Eva for that special craft beer. I was in Carcross by Bennett Lake. Beautiful scenery but the tales of hardship and and death suffered by the miners and their animals are gruesome.

[L Verge]

(12-28-2018 06:34 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Thanks, Roger. I have another one - and again, Google image search is NOT lege artist - this gentleman has often been "linked" to Lincoln. Who is/was he?

Sure looks like a young Winston Churchill...

[Eva Elisabeth]

Kudos, Laurie - that was a "hole-in-one"! I would never have recognized him and was quite amazed when I came across this photo! You, too, win an "American Dream" craft beer!

[L Verge]

(12-28-2018 08:16 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Kudos, Laurie - that was a "hole-in-one"! I would never have recognized him and was quite amazed when I came across this photo! You, too, win an "American Dream" craft beer!

Would love to have that beer for my Lincoln collection, but I doubt that it would make it through customs.

[AussieMick]

I agree with Laurie. Looks like Winston when he was going to Sudan.

[RJNorton]

Who is this person?

[Eva Elisabeth]

A son or grandson or x-times-grandson of a president? Prince William? (Not the latter but resembles a bit.)

[RJNorton]

Great guess, Eva, but not correct.