About RootsForge
RootsForge helps a young person become their family’s storykeeper. You pick an interview question, ask a family member out loud, and write down what you learn in your own words. Willow — 🌳 the storykeeper — never invents your family for you; she just keeps a good question ready and a place to write the answer.
The questions come from the research-backed “Do You Know?” family-narrative scale (Duke & Fivush): children who know their family stories — where people come from, how they met, the hard times they got through — tend to be more resilient. Your answers build a timeline and a printable family book.
Your privacy is built in. There is no recording — RootsForge keeps only the words you type. Everything stays on this device (no account, nothing is sent anywhere), and your family owns it: you can save your book as a share code to keep or move it, or clear it entirely, whenever you like.
A few of the 18 questions you can ask:
- Where did you grow up? What was it like there?
- Where did YOUR grandparents grow up?
- How did our family come to live where we live now?
- How did your parents (or you and your partner) first meet?
- Where does my name come from? Who chose it?
- What does our family name mean, or where is it from?
Honest note for grown-ups: RootsForge is a gentle interviewing + family-history activity. The harder questions are optional and framed kindly (only if a relative wants to share). It is not a promise of a test score, and it collects nothing — the archive is a file your family keeps on your own device.