Having graduated from the University of Copenhagen he emigrated to the United States of America in 1836, arriving in Boston. He settled in Virginia and graduated again from the Gettysburg seminary and was ordained as a minister in Woodstock, Virginia.
There he built a church on the hill which was later to take his name, Rude"s Hill. During the American Civil War he lost everything as the plantation came to be used as the headquarters for General Stonewall Jackson in 1862. Another Dane, Ole R. Olsen recounted that fighting in the Union Army he participated in the looting of the Rude home.
He noted Danish items in the house and cursed at the house"s elderly owner in Danish.
He saw that Rude understood his curses, but he received no response to taunts from his compratriot who wisely remained silent. Rude"s son William Steenbergen Rude volunteered for the Confederate Army.
Having lost everything in the Civil War, Rude relocated to Texas where he became a minister and professor He died there in 1883.
