STORIES
FROM THE PAST
Why build a house in the middle of a forest and why is it still standing after a quarter of a millennium?
Count Frederik Wilhelm Conrad Holck became a marshal of the royal court and was given the rank of Privy Councillor to the absolute monarch, King Christian VII, in which role he was influential and extremely powerful. He organized court parties and masquerades, often leading to wild nocturnal excesses and drunken trips to the capital with the young king. But the count was opulent and squandered his wealth.
Count Holck had several estates, including Krengerup on Funen. The estate ran a farm and had large forests on its land. Apparently, Count Holck believed that the locals were poaching in his forest in Bukkerup, so around 1769 he hired a forest ranger to protect the game. Some of the forest was cleared and a small house was built as an official staff residence.
The following year, however, Count Holck was deposed after the king was on a trip to the duchy of Holstein. The king found a new favorite in the form of Johann Friedrich Struense, who was appointed as the new court physician. Count Holck was forced to sell Krengerup Manor and the whole estate in order to keep one of his other holdings. He made an agreement with the aging Count Christian Rantzau, whom he knew from court, to buy Krengerup. The old Rantzau was succeeded by his son Frederik Rantzau, who inherited the title and estate. Christian Rantzau decided to invest heavily in a new main house at Krengerup and made farming more efficient with modern equipment, new stables and farm buildings.
The extensive work on the estate also had an impact on the small house in the forest. More forest was cut down to make room for a few fields and the house was extended with 3 new wings. It was now a forester's farm and thus the official residence for the forester and his family. The farm would be home to 7 generations of foresters for the next 200 years before the final forester left the farm in 1913. After that it was no longer a forester's farm.
After 1913 a tenant farmer and his wife moved onto the farm in order to farm the land. The couple failed to have children an so the adopted their maid's illegitimate child. That child, a son, bought the farm from the Rantzau family in 1952. He was prompted to do so because an estate manager had stolen from the coffers and left a considerable debt. To ensure the estate's survival after that economical crisis, some assets were sold off. Since then, a family of teachers has lived on the farm, and in 2023, the farm changed hands to a young couple from Copenhagen who have set out to carefully renovate the idyllic farm with respect for the cultural heritage.
3 russian girls immigrated to Denmark
Teophilia Zerbin was born in 1902 in a poor household, she was sent into care with the Bojanowski family. We must imagine a rough time back then in a southern province of Russia. A foster-sister Justine Bojanowski had died leaving behind her husband William Tiede and their daughter Adele. William fled to America to escape enlistment as a soldier just before the Great War. Without a mother or father, the young child Adele was dependent on the Bojanowski family. Another foster-sister Emma Bojonowski took it upon herself to raise her niece, Adele.
During the Great War, about 1916, the three girls also decided to immigrate, their journey taking them through warstricken Poland and Germany into the Duchy of Slesvig. Teophilia was 14 years old, Emma was 26 years old and Adele was 8 years old – and together they began to rebuild a life as farm laborers.
Emma had two children, born out of wedlock. According to the census her surname was now Tiede (after her brother-in-law) and not Bojanowski. Her two illegitimate boys were named Hermann Tiede, born 1917, and Adolph Tiede, born 1920.
Emma told the church registrar a lie in that her son's father had left for America – but William Tiede was not the father. He had already arrived New York in 1913 and remarried in 1915. Nevertheless she took advantage of Wiliam's surname, Tiede. Then tragedy happens: Emma gave birth to a stillborn child. She dies the day after due to complications. Teophilia is now completely alone with 3 children, none of them are her own, none of them having a father. The children were soon after given to foster families around the area. The shock of losing the children, being witness to the death of a sister at such an early age must have been unbearable.
Theophilia might have needed comfort and she received close attention from another and much older farm laborer, Paul Hein. But when she became pregnant in 1922, he hurried away, leaving the county. With the destiny of Adele in mind Theophilia was determined that the father had to take responsibility, so with the help of another immigrant family she filed charges with the police. The records show Paul Hein was reluctant, but when the evidence piled up against him, he accepted paternity and Teophilia was awarded benefits from him. This was the very sad background story of Paula born in the parish of Bedsted in 1922 as the illegitimate child of Teophilia Zerbin and Paul Hein.
Laura emigrated to America and vanished
Carrying only 30 dollars Laura Mathilde Jorgensen sailed from Glasgow to New York in 1903 on the ship ‘Furnessia’. For many of the first years she was in New York her family back home in Denmark received letters and packages. In the beginning they were addressed to her parents, and when they died the correspondence continued with a sister-in-law, but eventually they lost all contact – what had happened?
Laura Mathilde was born in 1876, grew up on a modest farm outside the provincial town of Odense. Her parents owned about 5,5 acres of land but still had to struggle to get ends meet. The hard labour on the farm was however not something Laura wanted to pursue, she liked to dress nicely and cared a lot about her looks. A niece wrote in her family memoirs that Laura Mathilde was outgoing, very attractive and enjoyed going dancing. This is perhaps seen in her portrait.
After she spent a few years as a kitchen’s maid working for the high-ranking calvary officer, Robert A. Aalborg in Odense, she agreed to work as a housekeeper with Thora Dixon in Brooklyn, New York. The Dixon family was Danish, they came from Kerteminde, the husband was an iron-worker with Thora had three children. This was to be Laura Mathildes ticket to a new and more exciting life. She travelled from the capital city of Copenhagen to Glasgow where she embarked the steam powered vessel.
Fate would have it that the Dixons divorced, Thora went home to Denmark leaving all her children behind. Later, in 1924 Laura Mathilde finally married after a lengthy employment with an unmarried millionaire man. She was 46 years old at the time an her husband Ove Christiansen, a retired ships sea-faring boatswain, was even older. In the beginning they lived in the Bronx, then later moved to Queens. Unfortunately, the marriage was not blessed with children. They had met too late in life.
Laura Mathilde died of an embolism in the heart at the age of 67 in 1943. She was laid to rest in Fresh Pond Cementary, New York, this was during the 2nd Word War which likely explains why the Danish relatives heard nothing about her death or burial. On the photo is Laura Mathilde with her dog in the window and standing outside is her husband Ove.
Peter survived
the Great War
In 1915 Peter Friedrich Christian Rubusch was as 19 years old enlisted in the German army. He was born in Kragelund near Bov and he was Danish by heart, but was as many Danish young men from Southern Jutland he was forced to serve in the 86thregiment on the side of the Germans in World War One.
On the picture he is seen on the left in his uniform while on leave and in relaxed company with his soldier friend Karl Bühring. After the Great War as it was called then, Karl married Peters older sister Marie, however unfortunately their happiness was cut short. They had only one daughter and then Marie died at the age of 26.
Peter took part in many battles during the Great War and during one of the major battles at Saint Quentin in France in September 1918 he was hit by a rifle shot. He was wounded when a single bullet penetrated both his upper and lower right arm. The remarkable injuries were x-rayed after the war in order to document his disability and increase his pension as a veteran, but to no avail.
In spite of his disability, he was put to work in his father’s workshop after his homecoming. When his father died in 1922, he continued the family business as a blacksmith. He married a local maiden named Magdalene with whom he had 4 children. Tody there are many descendans of Peter Friedrich Christian Rubusch.
Jacob swam to
San Francisco
About 1865 Jacob Bendixen disembarked from the sail ship where he had served as helmsman. The family narrative reads, it was only his second journey away at sea. He was born in Aabenraa, Denmark, in 1846 on the family estate to parents Bendix Georg Bendixen and his wife Caroline Amalie von Warner.
For many generations the family had been shipowners, captains and helmsmen onboard the ships they owned. All sons were expected to endure training and participate in the intercontinental maritime trade as a family business.
However, luck was running out. The business was in rapid decline and multiple ships were sold to cover financial losses. Perhaps this situation made it easier for Jacob to make his decision to jump off and literally swim to San Francisco from the anchored ship.
Jacob is recorded in the 1870 census in Contra Costa County, California. He worked in the forests and was seen from time to time by Danish seamen selling fur. He was registered as a voter in 1871 and many times after that. He was appointed public administrator of the county in 1898 and served for a 4-year period. He had neithe wife or children.
The niece was a
domestic servant
Thyra Cecilie Steenholdt was born in 1912 in the vicinity in the rural parish of Goerding, Denmark. She was the second youngest of a sibling group of eight and they were brought up on the outskirts of the town of Gram. The oldest son described in his diary how the father was not a pleasant man, how he wasn't diligent in his work and generally did not take very good care of his family. Soon after the children’s confirmation they all left home to live and work elsewhere. An aunt on the maternal side offered an exciting opportunity, her name was Meta Kjestine Frandsen.
Meta was born in 1885 but without having married she gave birth to twins in 1909: Hellmut and Alfrieda. Unfortunately, both twins both died within 4 weeks. The distraught Meta needed a purpose to avoid despair and she decided to travel to London, perhaps to rebuild a new life there. Not long after arriving in London she met and married Arnold Greaves Hansard, a gentleman who was nearly two decades older, born 1866.
He was very well educated as an engineer and was soon after dispatched to Mombasa in Kenya by the British government. There he was to oversee the electrification of the country, which was colonized by the British in 1895.
Hansard was a man of wealth due to his high position as a civil servant, he and his young Danish wife had the means to expand their household to include a niece. About 1924 they sent for a niece to travel to Mombasa, this was Thyra’s unmarried older sister Marie Kjestine Steenholdt, who grasped this opportunity. At a later date, Thyra was also called for, and she travelled to Essex where she was registered in the census as an unpaid domestic servant to the now retired Hansard.
Thyra met a local farmer's son named Kenneth Ward Byford whom she married in 1943. In searching for descendants in Denmark at least two were named after Hansard, which proves the family bond still existed. Thyra was laid to rest in Cambridge at the age of 76.
