Ever stumble onto a story so weird it feels like the universe is playing a prank on you? That’s basically the deal with the adventures of Baron Trump. If you’ve spent any time on the weirder corners of the internet since 2017, you’ve probably seen the screenshots. Or the TikToks. People lose their minds over this stuff.
It’s not just a name. We’re talking about a series of books written in the late 1800s—literally over 130 years ago—that feature a kid named Baron Trump who lives in a place called Castle Trump. Oh, and he’s guided by a man named "Don."
Coincidence? Maybe. Spooky? Absolutely.
But once you peel back the layers of the "time traveler" conspiracy theories, what you actually find is a bizarre piece of literary history that’s honestly more interesting than the memes. It’s a mix of Victorian-era sci-fi, "hollow earth" theories, and a writer named Ingersoll Lockwood who had a really, really strange imagination.
Who Was the Real Baron Trump?
First off, let’s clear up the identity crisis. The character in the books isn't American. He’s a young German aristocrat named Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Von Troomp. He just goes by "Baron Trump" for short.
He’s not exactly a "relatable" protagonist. Honestly, the kid is a total snob. He’s precocious, incredibly wealthy, and thinks he has a "massive brain"—his words, not mine. He spends most of his time insulting people he meets and traveling with his dog, Bulger.
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Ingersoll Lockwood, the author, was a New York lawyer and diplomat. He wasn’t a professional novelist in the way we think of them today. He was more of a hobbyist who caught the "Alice in Wonderland" bug. In the late 19th century, everybody wanted to write about kids falling into holes or traveling to moons. Lockwood just decided his kid would go to Russia.
The Marvelous Underground Journey
The most famous of the books is Baron Trump's Marvelous Underground Journey, published in 1893. The plot is a trip. Literally.
Baron gets bored with his life of luxury at Castle Trump. He finds an ancient manuscript written by a man named Don (Don Constantino Bartolomeo Madregal, if we're being precise). This manuscript tells him about a "World within a World" hidden deep inside the Earth.
So, what does he do? He heads to Russia.
The books are basically a series of "monster of the week" encounters. Baron and Bulger find a portal in the Russian Arctic and drop into a subterranean land filled with different societies.
The Strange Lands of the Underworld
Lockwood wasn’t just writing for kids; he was satirizing human nature. The places Baron visits are weirdly specific:
- The Land of Transparent Folk: People here are literally see-through. If they tell a lie, they turn opaque and cloudy. Imagine if Twitter worked like that.
- The Rattlebrains: A society where no one remembers anything that happened more than an hour ago. They think this is a virtue because you can’t hold a grudge if you can’t remember why you’re mad.
- The Sodopsies: These are "Ant People" who live in total darkness and have lost their sight and hearing, communicating only through touch.
- The Land of King Gilead: A frozen place where everyone has a low body temperature. They hate "hot heads" because they think fast thinkers are dangerous and impulsive.
The narrative doesn't really have a "point" in the modern sense. Baron just wanders around, offends a bunch of people, nearly gets killed, and then goes home. It’s episodic and, if we're being honest, kind of a slog to read by today's standards. The language is dense and full of "thees" and "thous."
The 1900 Connection: Why People Are Actually Freaked Out
If it was just a kid named Baron, people might have ignored it. But Lockwood wrote another book in 1896 called 1900; or, The Last President. This is where things get truly "glitch in the matrix" territory.
This book isn't part of the adventures of Baron Trump series, but it’s inextricably linked in the public mind. It describes a populist candidate who wins the presidency in a shock victory. Immediately after the election, New York City erupts in riots.
The book mentions people gathering at the "Fifth Avenue Hotel." For context, the real-life Trump Tower sits on Fifth Avenue.
The "Last President" in the book appoints a man named Pence to his cabinet.
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Yeah.
It’s easy to see why the internet exploded when these books were rediscovered in 2017. You’ve got a Baron Trump, a "Don," a portal in Russia, a populist president, and a guy named Pence. It’s a lot to take in.
Skepticism vs. The "Time Travel" Theory
Look, I love a good mystery. But as an expert on this niche history, I have to be the "hot head" (per King Gilead) and look at the facts.
Most of these similarities are what psychologists call apophenia—the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things.
The name "Baron" was a fairly common title and name in the 19th century. "Trump" is a word that means to surpass or outdo, making it a great name for a boastful character. And "Don"? That’s just a standard Spanish honorific. Lockwood lived in an era where Russia was the great "unknown" frontier for many Westerners, much like space is for us today.
As for the "Pence" thing? It’s a coincidence. A wild, statistically improbable coincidence, but still a coincidence. Lockwood was a lawyer in New York; he was writing about the political tensions he saw around him—the struggle between the gold standard and "silverites," the rise of populism, and the fear of urban unrest.
Why These Books Still Matter
Why are we still talking about the adventures of Baron Trump?
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It’s not because they’re great literature. They’re not. They’re weird, clunky, and the protagonist is annoying.
They matter because they show how history repeats itself—or at least how human anxieties stay the same. Lockwood was worried about the collapse of the Republic and the rise of "the mob." He was fascinated by the idea of hidden worlds and the limits of human knowledge.
The rediscovery of these books in the 2010s was a perfect storm of digital archeology and political polarization. It turned a forgotten Victorian author into a "prophet" for some and a curiosity for others.
Key Takeaways for the Curious
If you're looking to explore this further, don't expect a fast-paced thriller. Here is how to actually engage with the material:
- Read the public domain versions: Don't pay for "special editions" on Amazon. These books are out of copyright. You can find them for free on Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive.
- Focus on the satire: Instead of looking for "predictions," look at what Lockwood was making fun of. His "Transparent Folk" are a hilarious take on Victorian social manners.
- Check out the illustrations: The original drawings by George W. Edwards are actually pretty cool. They capture that specific "creepy-whimsical" vibe that 19th-century illustrators did so well.
Next Steps for Your Research:
Start by downloading the PDF of Baron Trump's Marvelous Underground Journey from the Library of Congress website. It's the most "authentic" way to see the original formatting. If you find the prose too dense, skip to Chapter 5—that’s where the actual "underground" stuff starts happening and the pacing picks up. For a broader context, compare Lockwood's work to The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, which was the "big" hollow-earth book of that era. It helps you see that Lockwood wasn't a lone crazy person; he was part of a huge literary trend that we’ve mostly forgotten.