Thursday, December 7, 2006


Francois Rude's tomb
April 1998 Harold had a conference in Paris and Emily and I went too! We found the cemetery and were thrilled to find his his very fine tombstone. Paris was wonderful of course.

6 comments:

Roger Rude said...

OK. So can someone break down the exact way in which we are related to him?

SandyBrookRude said...

Well, I think don't we are related. :-) Just share a name.

StillGrooving said...

You never know. We have never tracked down the origin of the first Rude in America. Howard Rude did research the family back to Zelah Rude, who came to Ohio after the Revolutionary War. There is no mention of the country of origin. There is some speculation that the Rude's came to the colonies from Holland and that they were in Holland because of religious persecution in England, if I remember correctly. But it is all speculation.

Mary said...

I like to think that we are related to him. Nice to think that there's someone famous in the family!

On a slightly relevant note, I recently learned that "Rude" is also a Ukrainian surname. Some of my friends here are convinced that I must have a long lost Ukrainian connection that I just don't know about. :)

StillGrooving said...

Ask your friends if the name "Zelah" sounds Ukrainian. Everytime I hear the name I'm reminded of the film "Young Frankenstein", my ALL TIME favorite comedy movie. I guess its the way the movie shows "Transylvanian" folk all using the "Z" sound so heavily in their accents.

StillGrooving said...

I know that a lot of Claudia's relatives come from Eastern Europe - she has the Mazaros surname (Originally it was Meszaros), of course, and there's Zeman and Kosher. She has several very old photographs of ancestors with some kind of European language script on them. We need to ask our friend Hristina, from Romania, if she can recognize the language.

Anyway, Rude sounds dutch to me. There are Rude's in Germany, I'm told, and obviously there French Rude's.