Rask / Todd Family — Forsa & Hälsingland, Sweden

This branch sits off the France wine-trip geography (it's in northern Sweden), but the speaker-notes edition of Christy's "Return to Roots" presentation documents it in full — primary church records plus a vivid family story — so it is recorded here as part of the knowledge base and as a possible standalone heritage trip (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf). The line runs Mary → Patricia Ann Todd → … → Marta Rask × Walter Todd (source: Holley Family Tree.ged).

The documented genealogy (Forsa parish records)

• Märta (Marta) Rask — b. 24 April 1879 in Forsa, Gävleborg (Hälsingland province), Sweden; baptised at the Lutheran Forsa kyrka near Hudiksvall (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).
• Hans Andersson Rask (Marta's father) — arbetare (worker/laborer), b. 24 October 1848 in Ytåbo, a small settlement in Forsa parish (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).
• Anna Eriksdotter Sundell (Marta's mother) — b. 6 August 1847; married Hans 27 October 1878 (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).
• The family lived at the hamlet of Röda, just west of Hudiksvall in Forsa parish (approx. 61.703° N, 16.947° E); the farmstead is still inhabited today (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).
• Anna died when Marta was about three. Hans remarried Ella Svensdotter (b. Järvsö), herself widowed — the household-examination book notes "Förut gift med Embrek Jonsson" ("previously married to Embrek Jonsson"). The blended household's children were Brita (b. 6 Feb 1876, Ella's daughter from her first marriage), Marta (b. 24 Apr 1879), Anders (b. 30 Nov 1881) and Helena Maria (b. 30 Sep 1890) (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).

These details come from the husförhörslängd (parish household-examination books) for Forsa, 1874–1880 and 1891–1895 — annual priest-led reviews that doubled as a population register, recording literacy, catechism knowledge, communion attendance, vaccination, and moves (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf). The originals are archived under the Swedish National Archives (Riksarkivet) and are available digitally via ArkivDigital and Riksarkivet/SVAR (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).

Marta's story: orphanage to homestead

In 1893 (moving-out certificate; one record reads 16 Sept 1894), when Marta was ~14, the family emigrated to America — Minneapolis (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf). The narrative Christy relays:

• Marta did not get along with her stepmother. Her father placed her at the Sheltering Arms Orphanage in Minneapolis to work for bed and board (no wages), and sent her brother (Andrew?) to a local farmer on the same terms — "he got a pig for Christmas." Marta stayed until ~1897, when she turned 18 and was on her own (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).
• A Montana cattleman named Van Camp, recruiting in Minneapolis, paid her way to Two Dot, Montana as a domestic and hired girl (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).
• There she met Walter Todd, a cowboy and ranch hand, and they courted. Early in 1899 Walter left for Spokane, Washington, taking a better job as a fireman on the Great Northern Railway locomotive. In summer 1901 he sent for Marta; they married in Spokane on 5 October 1901. Sons Vernon and Ralph (and later Glen, b. 1910) were born there (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).
• Around 1906–07 Walter's Missouri relatives organised a group to take up free homesteads in eastern Colorado; in 1907 the family arrived at Flagler, Colorado (160 acres under the Homestead Act). They proved the claim — house, barn, five years' residence — and received the deed in 1912, but the prairie was turning into the future "dust bowl"; unable to make a living, Walter sold out and moved the family back to the Pacific Northwest in 1912 (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).

> The Todd side (American, largely unverified). Walter Todd was born in Shelby, Missouri; his father in Caroline County, Maryland, with trees that run the Maryland line back to the 1600s and then to Connecticut, and perhaps England. Christy flags this as not yet validated — "going to take some time to really dig in some older records here in the US" (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).

Forsa & Hälsingland — the heritage destination

• Forsa kyrka — a medieval parish church serving the Hälsingland countryside, in the Diocese of Uppsala, where Marta was baptised. Forsa is famous in Swedish legal history: the Forsa Ring, a Viking-Age iron ring carved with runes that set out a system of fines, hung on the church door and is considered one of the oldest written Swedish laws — a forerunner of the medieval Hälsinge Law (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).
• Hälsingland decorated farmhouses — the region's prosperous 19th-century farmers built large, lavishly painted banquet rooms for celebrations; this tradition is the basis of the UNESCO-listed Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).
• The landscape combines coastal scenery, forests, rural villages, lakes and traditional farmland around Hudiksvall (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).
• Gävle is about 1.5 hours away by car or train — a larger city, and home of the Gävle Goat (Gävlebocken), a towering straw Yule Goat erected each Advent since 1966 and famously burned down most years (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).

Where to stay (as suggested in the deck): a manor-house spa hotel at Näsviken (Bruksallén 8, 820 64 Näsviken), a short drive from Forsa; Hudiksvall for town amenities and transport; or self-catering cottages across Hälsingland, many with lake or sea views (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).

Swedish culture & food woven through the deck: fika (the daily coffee-and-pastry ritual — kanelbullar, kardemummabullar); aquavit (caraway-forward spirit served chilled); Midsummer (new potatoes with dill, pickled herring, strawberries and cream); St. Lucia's Day (13 December, candle crowns, saffron buns); and Christmas centred on Christmas Eve, with glögg (mulled wine), the Julbock (Yule Goat) and Jultomte (source: Holley-family-notes.pdf).

Related pages

• Mary's Family History — the wider ancestry and how this branch fits
• Noble / Sullivan / Childs Family — Derbyshire & Staffordshire, England — Mary's English/Irish branch (another off-route origin)
• Holley / Dougherty Family — County Roscommon, Ireland — Mary's Irish (Holley/Dougherty) branch
• Holley / Archibald Family — Gargunnock & Stirling, Scotland — Mary's Scottish branch