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The Heirloom Portrait & The Danish Flood: Verifying Family Lore (with Rhonda Budge) | Episode 129 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Crista Cowan: Have you ever looked at an old family portrait hanging on the wall in your parents' or grandparents' house and wondered about the person staring back at you?
• 0:09
  Crista Cowan: Growing up, my guest Rhonda Budge spent hours sitting beside her beloved grandmother Olga looking at a large framed portrait of her great-great-grandfather.
• 0:21
  Crista Cowan: Her grandmother always said that if the house ever caught fire, that portrait was the one single thing she would grab.
• 0:28
  Crista Cowan: Behind the striking eyes in that picture was a story of survival and courage and Danish pride.
• 0:34
  Crista Cowan: It was a story that moved from a raging Baltic Sea to a quaint mountain inn in Southern California.
• 0:41
  Crista Cowan: But as the years passed, Rhonda wondered if the tale had been stretched over generations into something of a tall tale.
• 0:48
  Crista Cowan: What she discovered when she finally looked into the records is that sometimes the stories passed down to us really are grounded in truth.
• 0:57
  Crista Cowan: And sometimes the whole story is even more unbelievable than what was shared.
• 1:02
  Crista Cowan: Rhonda first shared the story with my Pajamas and Pedigrees membership community, and the second I heard it, I just knew she had to share it with all of you.
• 1:12
  Crista Cowan: She even drove all the way from South Texas to Utah to sit in the podcast studio with me so we could tell it face to face.
• 1:19
  Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with Rhonda Budge.
• 1:22
  Crista Cowan: Hi, I'm Crista Cowan, and this is the podcast where telling your family stories can help create a deeply connected family.
• 1:31
  Crista Cowan: Welcome to Stories That Live In Us.
• 1:34
  Crista Cowan: Well, Rhonda, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.
• 1:41
  Crista Cowan: You have been a member of uh our Pajamas and Pedigrees group for how long?
• 1:45
  Rhonda Budge: Um a little over, not quite a year, I guess.
• 1:47
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 1:48
  Crista Cowan: And like what was it that attracted you to that?
• 1:51
  Rhonda Budge: Um, well, it was the the opportunity to be able to be with like-minded people.
• 1:56
  Rhonda Budge: So um to, you know, get in on the webinars and to collaborate.
• 2:00
  Rhonda Budge: And I really enjoyed that.
• 2:01
  Rhonda Budge: I enjoy the sessions that you do, and I love watching the chat, and everybody's so active.
• 2:07
  Rhonda Budge: It never ceases to amaze me.
• 2:09
  Rhonda Budge: You know, you'll be looking for something, and next thing you know, there's 40 people looking for the same thing, including me, although I don't think I'm quite as good at it as they are because they're always getting to it faster than I do.
• 2:21
  Rhonda Budge: But I I just really like that collaboration.
• 2:24
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 2:24
  Crista Cowan: Uh well, family history is not a game of speed.
• 2:27
  Crista Cowan: No, no, not in any way, shape, or form.
• 2:30
  Crista Cowan: They will still be dead tomorrow.
• 2:32
  Rhonda Budge: Exactly.
• 2:32
  Rhonda Budge: So, what got you into family history?
• 2:34
  Rhonda Budge: Um, well, I have to accredit to my grandmother.
• 2:38
  Rhonda Budge: Um, my grandmother was a very proud Danish, uh first-generation American with uh Danish parents that had immigrated.
• 2:46
  Rhonda Budge: And she was very interested in her family, and she used to uh take me to what she called decoration day, uh, to the local cemeteries, and we would walk through as we were decorating the graves, and she would tell me, you know, who all the people were, and I would ask a lot of questions.
• 3:05
  Rhonda Budge: And then she started putting together a family tree on it's sort of like butcher block paper, um, but it's large.
• 3:16
  Rhonda Budge: And uh she would write everything out on the paper, and she would write letters to her cousins over in Denmark and get information.
• 3:24
  Rhonda Budge: She uh there's an extra generation gap there because my father was adopted, and so uh she was born in 1900 and she had a lot of history, and it was always fun to talk with her, and um, she was a great storyteller.
• 3:41
  Rhonda Budge: She would uh I would spend a lot of time with her, and she would sit down with me and she'd pull out all of the photo albums, and she had saved newspapers, and she would pull them out too, and tell uh stories about everything.
• 3:57
  Rhonda Budge: And she had grown up in the San Bernardino, California Mountains.
• 4:01
  Rhonda Budge: Her father and mother had run an inn up in what is now modern-day crestline called the Skyland Inn, and she would tell all the stories about growing up there, her and her cousin.
• 4:15
  Rhonda Budge: And um I found a lot of newspaper articles about uh Christmas at Skyland and other events that they had.
• 4:23
  Rhonda Budge: And she was very proud of her heritage.
• 4:26
  Rhonda Budge: She used to always say, you know, Christopher Columbus didn't discover America, the Vikings did.
• 4:32
  Rhonda Budge: And um, and so she was just very proud of that.
• 4:36
  Rhonda Budge: And we used to take her to Solvang, um, and which is a little Danish town in it's by Santa Barbara, right?
• 4:44
  Rhonda Budge: Yeah, up by Santa Barbara.
• 4:45
  Rhonda Budge: And we'd take her up to Solvang, and uh and we'd spend a couple days up there and walk around, and she'd always very much uh was very proud of that.
• 4:55
  Rhonda Budge: And she had um this photo of her grandfather that uh before you talk about that, I what was her name?
• 5:04
  Crista Cowan: Her name was Olga.
• 5:05
  Crista Cowan: Oh, very Danish names.
• 5:07
  Crista Cowan: And what was her last name, her maiden name?
• 5:10
  Crista Cowan: Hansen.
• 5:11
  Crista Cowan: Olga Hansen.
• 5:12
  Crista Cowan: Yes, and she is your father's mother.
• 5:14
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 5:15
  Crista Cowan: Okay, and so she was born in California?
• 5:18
  Rhonda Budge: Yes, she was born up in the mountains in um in 1900.
• 5:23
  Crista Cowan: Okay, so did her parents immigrate together or did they immigrate separately?
• 5:27
  Rhonda Budge: They immigrated separately.
• 5:28
  Rhonda Budge: So he came over, Hans was his uh Danish name.
• 5:31
  Rhonda Budge: He went by John when he came to America.
• 5:34
  Rhonda Budge: He came over about 1880, um, and he uh kind of wandered around a little bit.
• 5:41
  Rhonda Budge: He started in Iowa and made his way out uh further west, came to California, came to San Bernardino, and then actually went up to Oregon for a while and then came back to San Bernardino.
• 5:51
  Rhonda Budge: What I don't know is where exactly he met Charlotte, um, her mother.
• 5:57
  Rhonda Budge: Um she came in around eight late 80s.
• 6:02
  Crista Cowan: And um Were they both adults when they came or were they teenagers?
• 6:05
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 6:06
  Rhonda Budge: He was about 17, she was about 18.
• 6:08
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 6:08
  Crista Cowan: So did they come with people or by themselves?
• 6:11
  Rhonda Budge: He came with his brother and she came with her sister and a brother as well.
• 6:15
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 6:15
  Rhonda Budge: So and they met in San Bernardino and got married, and um and he worked for the Santa Fe Railroad for a while, and then he was working on a road crew that was um working on the Lake Arrowhead Road.
• 6:34
  Rhonda Budge: And from what I understand from my grandmother, he saw the Skyland Inn and he really liked it, and so they became proprietors of it, and they ran it until Charlotte's death in 1909.
• 6:46
  Rhonda Budge: And then when she passed away, then he sold the inn and he moved back into the city with my grandmother.
• 6:54
  Rhonda Budge: And she had an older sister who had just gotten married, and uh they lived in the city until he passed in 1912.
• 7:03
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 7:03
  Crista Cowan: So was it just Olga and her older sister, or did they have other siblings?
• 7:07
  Rhonda Budge: Um, they had a brother who passed away in 1904.
• 7:10
  Rhonda Budge: So when she was very young.
• 7:12
  Crista Cowan: Okay, so that's so such an like immigrant story, right?
• 7:17
  Rhonda Budge: Yes.
• 7:17
  Rhonda Budge: Yes.
• 7:18
  Rhonda Budge: And and to read the articles about the Skyland Inn, it's so fascinating.
• 7:24
  Rhonda Budge: And she had a lot of old photos, um, you know, with the uh cow at the inn and the milk wagon.
• 7:32
  Rhonda Budge: And then um I found in this book called The History of California a biography.
• 7:38
  Rhonda Budge: It was done in 1907, and so it was a biography of John Hansen and his wife Charlotte, and it talked a lot about the Skyland Inn, details that I never knew.
• 7:48
  Rhonda Budge: Um, if she had told me I'd forgotten them, but that, you know, there was the main lodge, but then you could also do camping, and then they had cabins that you could rent and all of the things, and then the newspaper articles that I found again around Christmas at Skyland and other people going and visiting Skyland.
• 8:07
  Rhonda Budge: And up in the mountain areas, there were a lot of these kind of um guest ranches, I guess.
• 8:13
  Rhonda Budge: And when my grandparents got married in 1923, one of the things that they did for a while shortly after they got married is they ran a uh guest ranch called Moon Camp up at Big Bear Lake.
• 8:27
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 8:27
  Rhonda Budge: Now both the Skyland Inn and Moon Camp are now both gone.
• 8:31
  Rhonda Budge: That um they don't exist anymore.
• 8:34
  Rhonda Budge: But the interesting thing about Moon Camp um is that it was in the area where, I don't know if you've followed the news at all, where the famed Eagle couple, Jackie and Shadow.
• 8:45
  Rhonda Budge: Yeah, it's where they have their nests.
• 8:47
  Rhonda Budge: And now Katie.
• 8:48
  Rhonda Budge: But uh yeah, so it I didn't know that until one day I was I was watching the Eagle Cam and I was looking at it and I was like, oh gosh, I think this is right near where Moon Camp was.
• 9:00
  Rhonda Budge: And I looked it up and it was.
• 9:01
  Rhonda Budge: That's so cool.
• 9:03
  Rhonda Budge: Um, do you know where Wildwood is?
• 9:05
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 9:06
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, so that's my grandpa's sister had a cabin in Wildwood.
• 9:09
  Crista Cowan: So my dad grew up going up there a lot.
• 9:12
  Rhonda Budge: Yeah, and my my grandmother, she just loved the mountains.
• 9:16
  Rhonda Budge: And so um, when we would be out in the car anywhere, she'd always say to me, Um, look for the arrowhead.
• 9:24
  Rhonda Budge: Are you familiar with the arrowhead on the side of the mountain in in San Bernardino?
• 9:28
  Rhonda Budge: So there's uh Lake Arrowhead, and the reason it got its name is because there's this arrowhead formation on the mountain.
• 9:34
  Rhonda Budge: And so she'd always say, Look for the arrowhead, look for the arrowhead.
• 9:38
  Rhonda Budge: Um, and recently I was out there visiting my brother, who still lives in the area, and he's a private pilot, and we flew up to Las Vegas and we went over the mountains and all the way over, I was like, Where's the arrowhead?
• 9:51
  Rhonda Budge: Where's the arrowhead?
• 9:52
  Rhonda Budge: And I couldn't find it.
• 9:53
  Rhonda Budge: And then when we came back, I was like, Where's the arrowhead?
• 9:56
  Rhonda Budge: And I was pretty sure he was ready to eject me from the plane.
• 9:59
  Rhonda Budge: And I finally saw it, and I'm like, There's the arrowhead.
• 10:03
  Crista Cowan: How old was your grandma when you were born?
• 10:07
  Crista Cowan: She was 64 when I was and how long did you have her?
• 10:11
  Rhonda Budge: 20 years.
• 10:11
  Rhonda Budge: Wow, and that's all that's still does, but she just loved to tell stories, and um she, like I said, she would pull out the photo albums and we would go through, and I would sit next to her and we'd go through the photo albums.
• 10:27
  Rhonda Budge: And even though I'd heard the stories a million times, I would re-ask, you know, tell me about this.
• 10:31
  Rhonda Budge: And she had a lot of items that she had kept over the years that um she had a a wool, men's bathing suit that belonged to um my grandfather's uncle email, and it was from the late 1800s, and it the men's bathing suit that comes down to the knees and it has the short sleeves and it feels awful.
• 10:53
  Rhonda Budge: And it's made out of 100% wool.
• 10:56
  Rhonda Budge: And I I I would look at it and I'm and plus it's small, and I would think, gosh, what would happen when that got wet?
• 11:03
  Rhonda Budge: They'd drown.
• 11:06
  Crista Cowan: Um, so did more of Hans and Charlotte's family come over after them?
• 11:11
  Rhonda Budge: Um I don't believe, not that I found on Hans' side.
• 11:16
  Rhonda Budge: Uh Charlotte had a sister that was here, um, and their daughter Elna was uh right around my grandmother's age, and they'd got into a lot of things.
• 11:24
  Rhonda Budge: And then um she had a brother that stayed in the Iowa area in Audubon, uh Audubon, Iowa, I believe it was.
• 11:32
  Rhonda Budge: And did they ever go back to Denmark?
• 11:34
  Rhonda Budge: My grandmother did go.
• 11:36
  Rhonda Budge: The um Hans and Charlotte didn't.
• 11:38
  Rhonda Budge: They both passed away when my grandmother was young.
• 11:41
  Rhonda Budge: So Charlotte died in 1909, and Hans died in 1912.
• 11:45
  Rhonda Budge: Um my grandmother in 1969, she and my grandfather went over to Denmark and they visited um some family there.
• 11:57
  Rhonda Budge: They had she had found out in the 1950s that she had a cousin who was working as a merchant marine, and he came to California on one of his ships, and they went down to San Pedro and picked him up and took him around and visited all these places in California, you know, the desert and and uh Long Beach and the beaches, etc.
• 12:20
  Rhonda Budge: And um kind of showed him around.
• 12:23
  Rhonda Budge: And then in 1969, she and my grandfather went to Denmark, and that was a big deal.
• 12:30
  Rhonda Budge: I was a little girl, and we all got dressed up because back then you got dressed up to go to the airport, and we drove down to LAX to take grandma and grandpa to the airport and uh had lunch and then waited for them to take off on their flight, and then we went back to pick them up, and she put together this uh very detailed travel biography of all the places that they went and with pictures, and she went to where of the house where her father was born, and she went to her grandfather's grave site, and um, and then they toured around other places in Denmark and then eventually went to England and spent some time there and then came home.
• 13:14
  Crista Cowan: What an amazing trip.
• 13:15
  Crista Cowan: So, did had she kept up a correspondence with people in Denmark this whole time or just to plan for the trip?
• 13:21
  Rhonda Budge: She had kept up a correspondence with um Joe, who was the the young um man cousin that had come over on the merchant marine ship, and she'd kept up a correspondence with him up until the time that she died.
• 13:35
  Rhonda Budge: And then um I had corresponded for a while with his daughter and um and then kind of lost track because as I was working, I didn't do a lot on my family tree.
• 13:51
  Rhonda Budge: And uh so then when I took it back up and started looking at it again, I kind of tracked her down and and so she and I had corresponded, and she's helped me with some of the translations and things like that.
• 14:04
  Crista Cowan: So I love that.
• 14:05
  Crista Cowan: Well, the story uh from your family history that caught my attention was about this picture that was hanging in your grandmother's home.
• 14:11
  Crista Cowan: How big is this picture?
• 14:14
  Rhonda Budge: It's pretty big.
• 14:14
  Rhonda Budge: It's the well, the picture is probably about eight by ten, but the frame is quite large and it's deep.
• 14:22
  Rhonda Budge: It's one of those deep frames.
• 14:24
  Rhonda Budge: And so altogether it's I don't know, maybe 12 by uh 14.
• 14:31
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 14:32
  Crista Cowan: It's and I've seen a picture of it.
• 14:34
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 14:34
  Crista Cowan: Like he looks kind of imposing.
• 14:36
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 14:37
  Crista Cowan: As a child, like, did you have a reaction to that photo?
• 14:42
  Rhonda Budge: I I don't think I not negative, other than it was just always fascinating because he is he has very it's one of those where you're depending on where you're sitting in the room, you feel like the eyes are following you.
• 14:54
  Rhonda Budge: And um, and she always had it hanging in the living area of her house.
• 15:02
  Rhonda Budge: And so, and it was her prized possession.
• 15:05
  Rhonda Budge: You know, she had a few things that were very important to her, but that was if if I'm pretty sure if the house was burning down and she could grab only one thing, that would have been what she would have grabbed.
• 15:17
  Crista Cowan: So she so she was nine when her mom died, yes, and twelve when her dad died.
• 15:22
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 15:22
  Crista Cowan: How did she come into possession of this portrait?
• 15:25
  Rhonda Budge: That I'm not entirely sure of.
• 15:28
  Rhonda Budge: Um, I noted that she had it framed.
• 15:31
  Rhonda Budge: So she had a photo uh that was it has a torn edge, and she had taken it and gotten it restored.
• 15:38
  Rhonda Budge: And so if you look at the photo now that's framed, you can kind of see where they blurred it on that one edge.
• 15:45
  Rhonda Budge: And I actually now have the photo that has the the tear in it.
• 15:49
  Rhonda Budge: Um I think it must have come when her sister passed, that she probably got it from her sister, but that I don't know for sure.
• 15:59
  Rhonda Budge: And where did the family get it?
• 16:00
  Rhonda Budge: Like I think it must have come from her father, and he had gotten it from his father.
• 16:06
  Rhonda Budge: So did somebody send it to him, or do you think he brought it with him?
• 16:10
  Crista Cowan: I think it's his grandfather?
• 16:12
  Crista Cowan: It's his father.
• 16:13
  Crista Cowan: It's his father, okay.
• 16:15
  Rhonda Budge: I think he might have brought it with him.
• 16:16
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 16:17
  Rhonda Budge: Yeah.
• 16:18
  Rhonda Budge: He he had come over with a brother, and then he had other brothers and sisters that stayed in Denmark.
• 16:24
  Rhonda Budge: And um the between the two brothers, they had uh some possessions that they had brought over with them.
• 16:32
  Rhonda Budge: Um, the photo and and they had talked about some other things that they had brought with them.
• 16:37
  Rhonda Budge: There was a cup that actually belonged to her great-great-grandfather um that the brother had, and she used to talk about that a lot because it had been inscribed for the her great-grandparents on their 50th wedding anniversary.
• 16:54
  Crista Cowan: So what a treasure.
• 16:55
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 16:56
  Crista Cowan: So it's always amazing to me that some of these immigrants come from so far and they travel by ship and they cross the country and the things that they choose to keep and to protect.
• 17:06
  Rhonda Budge: Yes.
• 17:07
  Crista Cowan: And so a photo of your father, like when you think you may never see him again and he didn't, right?
• 17:12
  Crista Cowan: Like that's a big deal to that.
• 17:13
  Crista Cowan: He had that.
• 17:14
  Rhonda Budge: Right.
• 17:14
  Rhonda Budge: And his mother had passed when he was very young.
• 17:17
  Rhonda Budge: So his mother had passed when I think he was about four or five years old.
• 17:21
  Rhonda Budge: And so it was just his brother and his father there for a while until he remarried and had other children.
• 17:29
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 17:29
  Rhonda Budge: So what is Hans's father's name?
• 17:31
  Rhonda Budge: Johan.
• 17:32
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 17:32
  Rhonda Budge: Johan Christian Hansen.
• 17:34
  Rhonda Budge: Could you get a more dangerous?
• 17:37
  Rhonda Budge: Yeah, but it's kind of like searching for John Smith in the United States.
• 17:42
  Rhonda Budge: So it makes it a little harder, but yes.
• 17:46
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 17:46
  Crista Cowan: And and did you grow up knowing the story of him?
• 17:50
  Crista Cowan: Like, has it always been part of your memory, or is there a moment when you remember hearing the story?
• 17:56
  Rhonda Budge: You know, I think I don't remember a specific moment hearing it.
• 17:59
  Rhonda Budge: I think I just have, as long as I've known the picture, I've known the story.
• 18:04
  Rhonda Budge: And Okay, let's hear it.
• 18:06
  Rhonda Budge: So the story was that in uh the 1870s in Denmark, there was a flood.
• 18:14
  Rhonda Budge: And um the Baltic Sea.
• 18:17
  Rhonda Budge: So now the thing to remember about Denmark at the time, there was on the on the area that's known as, and I apologize for slaughtering Dana's pronunciation, but on the area that's kind of known as Jutland is um where haters slave and that my grandfather, great-great-grandfather lived at.
• 18:37
  Rhonda Budge: Um, that was under Prussian control.
• 18:40
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 18:40
  Rhonda Budge: The area where Copenhagen is was Danish.
• 18:44
  Rhonda Budge: And so um there was a flood that affected the area that was under the Prussian control, and um it devastated a lot of homes and a lot of people were stranded.
• 18:58
  Rhonda Budge: My great-great-grandfather was a ship captain.
• 19:01
  Rhonda Budge: He had a a boat, and he and um some friends of his who also had boats were going out and they were rescuing people from their homes.
• 19:11
  Rhonda Budge: And um and so when it was all over with, though, his ship was was uh totally lost.
• 19:20
  Rhonda Budge: It had washed ashore onto a knoll, and there was no salvaging it.
• 19:25
  Rhonda Budge: And he had um rescued these people, and the Prussian government awarded him some money for his efforts and also a medal.
• 19:36
  Rhonda Budge: And he was very proud Dane and did not like the fact that the Prussian government was in in Denmark, and so he refused the medal, but he took the money and he divided the money up among some of the people that had lost um their homes in the flood.
• 19:54
  Rhonda Budge: And so that was the story that I always knew.
• 19:57
  Rhonda Budge: And so that was kind of the whenever you'd asked who's the person in the picture, that was the story that you got told.
• 20:04
  Rhonda Budge: I didn't really have a lot of around dates.
• 20:07
  Rhonda Budge: I didn't know for sure where in Denmark.
• 20:10
  Rhonda Budge: I knew it was near Hater Slave where he was from.
• 20:13
  Rhonda Budge: Um, but I didn't know a lot of the details around it.
• 20:17
  Rhonda Budge: And it and again, you kind of grow up knowing that there's a story, but I think every family has a story.
• 20:24
  Rhonda Budge: It's it's kind of like the fish story, right?
• 20:26
  Rhonda Budge: And through the generations it goes from being, yeah, I caught a fish, to next thing you know, they've landed Moby Dick and they're dinging.
• 20:33
  Rhonda Budge: Right.
• 20:33
  Rhonda Budge: And so you never know quite how much has been um enhanced over the years.
• 20:41
  Crista Cowan: So is there this moment where you're like, I need to figure out if this is true or not?
• 20:44
  Rhonda Budge: Roots tech.
• 20:45
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 20:46
  Rhonda Budge: How long ago?
• 20:48
  Rhonda Budge: So last year.
• 20:49
  Rhonda Budge: Just this last rootsteck.
• 20:50
  Rhonda Budge: Uh yeah, the one in March.
• 20:51
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 20:52
  Rhonda Budge: So I was sitting in one of the AI um uh sessions that they had, and they were talking about, you know, how helpful AI can be for translation and for um transcription and, you know, kind of digging through large amounts of data to find things.
• 21:11
  Rhonda Budge: And I thought, you know, I and you had talked in one of our uh pajamas and pedigree session about having research goals.
• 21:20
  Rhonda Budge: And so I had put together my research goals, and one of them was uh Johann, Johann Christian Hansen, to get more information.
• 21:28
  Rhonda Budge: Um, I had all of the information that my grandmother had done, um, but it was really just the facts, you know, born in in 1832, died in 1908, married, and so on, but not a lot of the other information.
• 21:43
  Rhonda Budge: And so when I got back from Roots Tech, I um started playing with AI a little bit, and it dug up some information on the flood.
• 21:55
  Rhonda Budge: And so I thought, okay, well, now I'm on a I know.
• 21:59
  Rhonda Budge: That which is true?
• 22:01
  Rhonda Budge: Yeah, I know that's true.
• 22:02
  Rhonda Budge: So now what I need to do is find out, you know, the rest of it.
• 22:07
  Rhonda Budge: So I um wrote a letter to the Hater Slave Arc Archive.
• 22:13
  Rhonda Budge: And I asked, I, you know, told them everything that I knew.
• 22:17
  Crista Cowan: Did you have the letter translated or did you write it in English?
• 22:20
  Rhonda Budge: I wrote it in English, but I had um AI translate some words because I figured it might be easier, you know, if if some of it was the Danish language.
• 22:31
  Rhonda Budge: And so I wrote the letter to the archive and asked them to uh give me any information that they had on Johan Christian Hansen.
• 22:41
  Rhonda Budge: He had been uh a ship captain, believed he was involved in the flood.
• 22:47
  Rhonda Budge: And what year was the flood?
• 22:49
  Rhonda Budge: 1872.
• 22:51
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 22:52
  Rhonda Budge: Next thing I know about it took about four weeks, but I get an email back from them, and she had included his uh death notice in the paper, and she had translated it for me.
• 23:07
  Rhonda Budge: And I was reading it and it was all there in the death notice.
• 23:11
  Rhonda Budge: They wrote the story as part of his obituary.
• 23:14
  Rhonda Budge: Yeah, they wrote the story as part of his obituary.
• 23:16
  Rhonda Budge: And and then after he had lost his ship, he stayed in the shipping business.
• 23:22
  Rhonda Budge: He worked, um, he opened up a store where he sold, you know, shipping-related goods, and he also was involved in the the local insurance, uh, maritime insurance.
• 23:33
  Crista Cowan: So he didn't get another boat.
• 23:35
  Rhonda Budge: He did not get another boat.
• 23:36
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 23:37
  Crista Cowan: And so if the flood happened in the 1870s and uh Hans did not come to America till the 1880s, yes, he was he may have been involved.
• 23:47
  Crista Cowan: He may have helped his dad or he knew the story firsthand.
• 23:50
  Rhonda Budge: Yes, okay.
• 23:51
  Rhonda Budge: He definitely, I'm sure, knew the story firsthand.
• 23:53
  Rhonda Budge: I don't know what whether he would have been involved or not.
• 23:56
  Rhonda Budge: It it happened um a little ways away from Haterslave, from what I've been able to tell on the map, in a town called Halsmund.
• 24:04
  Rhonda Budge: And um so that's where the rescue took place.
• 24:08
  Rhonda Budge: But I'm sure the whole area was affected.
• 24:11
  Rhonda Budge: So, I mean, having been through Hurricane Harvey, it, you know, if that kind of stuff spreads.
• 24:17
  Crista Cowan: So that's amazing.
• 24:19
  Crista Cowan: So, was there any more information from the archive?
• 24:22
  Crista Cowan: Uh they sent some um I'm being really greedy.
• 24:26
  Rhonda Budge: Yeah, that's fine.
• 24:28
  Rhonda Budge: They they sent some um some of his maritime records.
• 24:32
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 24:32
  Rhonda Budge: So I have those as well.
• 24:34
  Rhonda Budge: They sent a tax record.
• 24:36
  Rhonda Budge: Um, everything's in Danish.
• 24:39
  Rhonda Budge: They did not translate everything, they translated the uh the death notice, but they did not translate everything else.
• 24:45
  Rhonda Budge: But so I'm still looking through some of that.
• 24:48
  Rhonda Budge: And um and then I asked uh when my grandmother had gone in 1969, she had taken a picture of his um grave.
• 25:00
  Rhonda Budge: And uh but when my when in the early late 1990s, early 2000s, my mom and my stepfather went to Denmark and I asked them, hey, you know, while you're there, since you're gonna be in hater slave, would you mind going and asking them if um the grave still exists?
• 25:22
  Rhonda Budge: And so they went to the cemetery and they said, No, the grave doesn't exist.
• 25:28
  Rhonda Budge: Um they told my stepfather that what happens is, you know, they basically recycle the the land.
• 25:36
  Rhonda Budge: That is very European.
• 25:37
  Rhonda Budge: Yes.
• 25:38
  Rhonda Budge: And um, and and that they they um possibly had paved over that area.
• 25:45
  Rhonda Budge: And so the way my stepfather put it to me is he was quite the jokester.
• 25:50
  Rhonda Budge: He said, We did not visit your grandfather's grave, but we may have uh driven over it at one point.
• 25:57
  Rhonda Budge: Like, okay.
• 25:58
  Rhonda Budge: So I had asked the archive, you know, do you know if the grave still exists?
• 26:05
  Rhonda Budge: And so then they referred me to the church where he would the burial was um handled through.
• 26:12
  Rhonda Budge: And I wrote them as well.
• 26:14
  Rhonda Budge: And they wrote back, they were also very helpful and said, Yes, we can confirm that uh we did handle the burials through this church.
• 26:23
  Rhonda Budge: We believe he was buried at this cemetery, but the grave no longer exists.
• 26:28
  Rhonda Budge: And they didn't get into any details.
• 26:31
  Crista Cowan: So wow, that's amazing.
• 26:33
  Rhonda Budge: But I have the old photo.
• 26:35
  Crista Cowan: Well, and not really like when you think about what perpetuates stories, oftentimes it is some kind of a visual cue to tell the story, right?
• 26:45
  Crista Cowan: Uh to remember the story, to like make sure that people have curiosity about it.
• 26:49
  Crista Cowan: So the fact that it hung in your grandmother's home and she told the story to you, she inherited it from her father, right?
• 26:56
  Crista Cowan: However, it came to her.
• 26:57
  Crista Cowan: I think that's that's amazing.
• 26:59
  Rhonda Budge: Yeah.
• 27:00
  Rhonda Budge: And she was so so proud of it.
• 27:03
  Rhonda Budge: And and it's such a striking photo.
• 27:06
  Rhonda Budge: Uh, even in the, you know, the 30 years that I've had it hanging in my house, um, people will come in and they'll see it and they'll, you know, who is that?
• 27:15
  Rhonda Budge: And I'll tell them the story.
• 27:17
  Rhonda Budge: And well, that's my great-great-grandfather.
• 27:20
  Rhonda Budge: And it was something she was very proud of.
• 27:22
  Rhonda Budge: And so when she passed, or before she passed, she asked me.
• 27:27
  Rhonda Budge: She said, you know, I don't know who it was just my dad.
• 27:31
  Rhonda Budge: And she said, I don't know who's going to want to to take the photo, and and um, I want it to go to someone who will appreciate it.
• 27:39
  Rhonda Budge: And and I told her I would I would take it.
• 27:42
  Rhonda Budge: Yes, please.
• 27:43
  Rhonda Budge: So um, and it's uh it's moved with us as we've gone through the years, and it is hung somewhere, always somewhere um where it can be viewed, at least by me, maybe not in an area where everybody else can see it, but at least where I can.
• 28:00
  Crista Cowan: So well, you said earlier if there was a fire and your grandmother would grab one thing, it would be that.
• 28:06
  Crista Cowan: You don't live in fire country, you live in hurricane country, but probably a similar sentiment.
• 28:11
  Rhonda Budge: Yes, and it it has made it into the back of the car along with the dogs.
• 28:17
  Crista Cowan: It has been kept safe all this time.
• 28:20
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 28:20
  Crista Cowan: So um in the obituary about the event, did it list anything about the people he rescued?
• 28:29
  Rhonda Budge: Um, no, it just uh mentioned that the the area that that it happened.
• 28:33
  Rhonda Budge: Uh they were on the attic of their house.
• 28:35
  Rhonda Budge: And again, you know, that um as I was reading the article, I I can so you know, those are visuals that we have seen multiple times.
• 28:44
  Rhonda Budge: We've never had to deal with it, knock on wood and and thank you, but um we've seen it on the TV a lot, and so I can I can only imagine, you know, at that time, well, first of all, you've got to think about it was the Baltic Sea.
• 28:58
  Rhonda Budge: Yeah.
• 28:58
  Rhonda Budge: So, and it was uh November.
• 29:01
  Rhonda Budge: So yeah, not warm water.
• 29:04
  Rhonda Budge: And um, and I imagined raging.
• 29:08
  Rhonda Budge: And so um I can only imagine the fear of being, you know, on a house that's being pounded by seawater and wondering, is anybody gonna come?
• 29:18
  Rhonda Budge: And in the death notice, what it says is that he and one of the other um uh ship captains, they didn't have a big enough boat to take everybody.
• 29:31
  Rhonda Budge: So what they did was he stayed behind on the house while they brought people in.
• 29:38
  Rhonda Budge: And um, and then eventually they were able to get everybody rescued.
• 29:43
  Rhonda Budge: Wow.
• 29:44
  Rhonda Budge: And he in the death notice, it also said that he um had always wanted to be buried with the Danish flag that had flown on his ship.
• 29:54
  Rhonda Budge: That was the one thing that he had from his ship, was the Danish flag, and he wanted to be buried with that, and so they had buried him.
• 30:02
  Rhonda Budge: The family had made sure that the the Don and Brag flag was with him.
• 30:07
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 30:07
  Crista Cowan: That's so cool.
• 30:08
  Crista Cowan: Um so the genealogist in me just wants to go see if there's like newspapers at the time that listed the names of the survivors.
• 30:15
  Crista Cowan: I would want to be doing their family tree.
• 30:18
  Rhonda Budge: Like, do you know this story?
• 30:20
  Rhonda Budge: Yeah, I may have to do that next.
• 30:22
  Rhonda Budge: I was just this is all so recent, and I was able to confirm that all of this actually happened.
• 30:27
  Rhonda Budge: That's so cool.
• 30:28
  Crista Cowan: Rhonda, thank you so much for sharing that story.
• 30:31
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 30:32
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 30:32
  Crista Cowan: And thank you for coming all the way from Texas.
• 30:35
  Crista Cowan: I know you had some stops along the way, but coming to be here in person to share it too.
• 30:39
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 30:39
  Crista Cowan: Well, before I let you go, we have this new segment in season three called One Word, One Story.
• 30:45
  Crista Cowan: Oh.
• 30:50
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 30:52
  Crista Cowan: Our word is chocolate.
• 30:54
  Crista Cowan: So, do you have a story about chocolate?
• 30:58
  Rhonda Budge: Um, only that I'm a self-affirmed chocolate.
• 31:01
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 31:01
  Rhonda Budge: Did that come from somebody?
• 31:03
  Rhonda Budge: Uh, probably my grandmother, I'm sure.
• 31:06
  Rhonda Budge: Um she was a chocolate as well.
• 31:10
  Rhonda Budge: And um so I I can honestly say that there is never chocolate far from me wherever I'm at.
• 31:18
  Crista Cowan: And um, do you have a particular brand of chocolate that you love?
• 31:21
  Rhonda Budge: Ghirardelli.
• 31:22
  Rhonda Budge: I'm I'm from California.
• 31:23
  Rhonda Budge: So Ghirardelli, I I can remember as a kid, we used to always go up to San Francisco at least once a year, and we would go to the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory and we'd watch them make the chocolate, and then my mom would let us uh buy some.
• 31:36
  Rhonda Budge: My other memory is that uh C's candies were the big in California.
• 31:42
  Rhonda Budge: And there was a C's candy in the mall that we used to go shopping at.
• 31:46
  Rhonda Budge: And so whenever, and it was right in the door, the in the main entrance of the mall.
• 31:50
  Rhonda Budge: And so whenever we would go to the mall, my mom would say, Okay, if you guys are good on the way out, I'll let you get some C's candy.
• 31:58
  Rhonda Budge: And so we always were made sure we we met that goal so that on the way out of the store, we could stop at C's Candy and and pick out a candy.
• 32:09
  Crista Cowan: That's so fun.
• 32:09
  Crista Cowan: I am also a California girl, so um you know C's candy.
• 32:13
  Crista Cowan: So I know C's candy well, yes.
• 32:15
  Crista Cowan: That was my grandmother.
• 32:16
  Crista Cowan: She used to, we wouldn't get the chocolates, she would always get herself a box of chocolates, but we would get the suckers.
• 32:21
  Crista Cowan: Do you remember those?
• 32:22
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 32:22
  Crista Cowan: So good.
• 32:23
  Crista Cowan: So here's my chocolate story.
• 32:25
  Crista Cowan: So I went to grade school in a little town in central California called Turlock.
• 32:29
  Crista Cowan: And uh it's not far if you head up toward the Sierra Nevadas.
• 32:33
  Crista Cowan: There was a town called Oakdale.
• 32:35
  Rhonda Budge: Okay.
• 32:36
  Crista Cowan: And Oakdale had a Hershey factory.
• 32:38
  Rhonda Budge: Oh, wow.
• 32:39
  Crista Cowan: Uh-huh.
• 32:39
  Crista Cowan: And so whenever we would go like up to Columbia or up to the mountains camping, every time we came back down, headed home, we would stop at the Hershey Factory.
• 32:47
  Crista Cowan: You had to take the tour, but if you took the tour, you got a free candy bar.
• 32:51
  Crista Cowan: Um, and so that was also like every time anybody would come visit, we'd be like, Do you want to go to the Hershey factory?
• 32:58
  Crista Cowan: Because that meant free chocolate.
• 33:00
  Crista Cowan: So that is one of my favorite childhood memories.
• 33:03
  Rhonda Budge: Well, I'm gonna have to check that out.
• 33:05
  Crista Cowan: I don't even know if it's still there.
• 33:07
  Crista Cowan: Well, that is the one word.
• 33:09
  Crista Cowan: I would love to hear what your one story is.
• 33:12
  Crista Cowan: If you're watching this on YouTube, leave it in the comments.
• 33:15
  Crista Cowan: Do you have a chocolate story?
• 33:17
  Crista Cowan: If you're listening on a podcast app, uh you can put it on Facebook, you can put it on Instagram, tag me so I can read it.
• 33:24
  Crista Cowan: I would love to have you share that with me.
• 33:27
  Crista Cowan: Well, Rhonda, thank you again for being here.
• 33:32
  Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing Johan and Olga with us.
• 33:36
  Crista Cowan: She sounds like she was a delightful grandma.
• 33:47
  Rhonda Budge: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.