Dorothy J. Click Lehman has spent decades digging through courthouse records. The Hudson, Ohio resident is the grandmother of 14 and a woman who started tracing her roots 30 years ago. Her research uncovered thousands of relatives. The list of names fills a 200-page book. It goes back further than the Great Pyramid. Lehman admits that internet resources let her take her research farther than she ever thought possible. Most people aren’t that devoted to genealogy. Still, millions use internet tools. Some are free. Some cost money. Sites like Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com help users create family trees. They access birth and death records. They explore roots.
GenForum is one of these resources. It is for budding and seasoned researchers. It works differently. It depends on users. Unlike other sites that link to huge databases, GenForum fosters community. Users ask questions. Users answer them. The site is part of a larger network owned by Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. This connection is essential. It taps into a huge user base established by Ancestry.com. Users share information that would be impossible to find otherwise. Think of it as the internet’s version of asking a grandmother what it was like growing up. The information goes well beyond census data. GenForum will never replace hard work. It adds a new dynamic to an old pastime.
Using GenForum to Find Your Roots
At its core, GenForum is simply an internet forum. Users post questions under different message boards. Other users respond with feedback. Original posts and responses stay on the site. Visitors can search through them. The content grows constantly. Anyone can read posts. To contribute, you need to register.
The registration process is free. It is surprisingly difficult. GenForum is part of Genealogy.com. Registration for both sites is tied together. This complicates the process. The easiest way to sign up is to jump in. Attempt to post to a discussion. The site will bring up a page asking you to register. It provides a link to the registration form. You need to know how to search to find that page. Fortunately, finding information is easier than getting registered.
To find a message board about a surname, region, or topic, use the “Forum Finder” on the home page. The Forum Finder does not search the content of messages. You need to start with a broad search. Sift through the information. To find George Washington, search for “Washington.” Click “Washington Family Forum.” Search for George specifically within that board. The process is cumbersome. It works. The site has nearly every last name. From “Aagre” to “Zyzelewski.” You have a strong chance of finding what you need. GenForum also lets you search surnames by letter. You can search regionally by country and state.
Once you find the forum, read the conversations. If you cannot find a discussion about a relative, create a post. Include as much information as possible. Birth and death dates help. Birthplaces help. Names of relatives help. This information helps other members make connections. It serves as a resource for future inquiries.
Like other forums, GenForum is moderated by administrators who act as digital security guards. These admins make sure that messages are related to genealogy and don’t contain any hateful or obscene content.
GenForum asks that users check if someone has already posted. Make new posts only if necessary. That way, all information about a particular person stays in one place. Most of these practices are standard. They apply to competitors. What sets GenForum apart remains to be seen.
Why My GenForum and Secure Storage Define Modern Genealogy
The value of any forum comes down to one thing: volume. GenForum knows this. By piggybacking on the massive traffic of Genealogy.com and Ancestry.com, it built a community of over 14,000 active message boards and pulls roughly 30,000 visitors monthly. That isn’t just a number. That is a support staff, a vast archive of questions, and a place where answers actually exist.
But raw traffic isn’t enough. Navigation matters. For anyone looking for how to use GenForum’s personalized features, the answer lies in “My GenForum.”
It sounds simple. It is. You click the link on the homepage. The site injects a customizable widget into your view. From there, you search for specific surname boards or geographic regions. Click a button. Add them to your list. Next time you load the page, those forums are front and center.
There is a catch. It relies on cookies. If your browser blocks them, the feature fails. You lose the convenience. You lose the speed.
Beyond personalization, the site offers chat rooms. They are underused. Logging in often means sitting alone with your thoughts. It’s a ghost town. More useful, perhaps, is the date-based search. You can filter posts by yesterday’s activity. This is critical for popular surnames. High-volume names generate daily noise. Filtering by date cuts through the static. It shows you what is happening now.
So, is GenForum the best option? Not quite. It’s less polished than its rivals. The registration process is clunky. The search interface feels dated. RootsWeb, for instance, boasts over 161,000 message boards. It is cleaner. It is easier to use.
Does that matter?
Not really. All major genealogy forums are free. They don’t compete; they complement. One site might have a thread about a Prussian village from 1890. Another might have a scanned census record for a Texas rancher. You need both. You don’t choose one. You use all of them.
The Physical Backbone of Digital Data
While forums handle the chatter, the data itself needs a home. You might think that data lives in the cloud. In Utah, it lives in stone.
Two hundred feet above a dirt road outside Salt Lake City, a 14-ton steel door guards the entrance to what is effectively the world’s most secure genealogical vault. Built into a mountain by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this isn’t just a server farm. It’s a fortress.
The facility protects more than 2 million rolls of microfilm. The tunnels inside stretch over 700 feet. They are climate-controlled. They are designed to withstand moisture, contaminants, and even nuclear blasts. The logic here is cold and practical. Many databases are moving to digital storage. The Church disagrees. For now, at least, they insist microfilm is the most secure way to store hundreds of millions of names.
Digital formats rot. Hard drives fail. Cloud providers go bankrupt or change terms of service. Granite does not. Microfilm does not.
This creates a strange duality in genealogy research. On one side, you have the hyper-active, messy, human-driven discussion boards of GenForum and its peers. On the other, a silent, mountain-hewn vault preserving physical copies of history in a way that defies time.
One gives you conversation. The other gives you permanence.
Why does this matter to you? Because your family tree is only as strong as its weakest link. If you rely solely on a forum that might vanish in a software update, you lose context. If you rely solely on a digital database that might lose data, you lose facts. You need the discussion to interpret the data. You need the vault to preserve it.
The internet changed how we find ancestors. It didn’t change the need for accuracy. It just changed the tools.
GenForum is one tool. The mountain is another. Both are necessary.
Is there a third? Probably. But we haven’t found it yet.
“Microfilm is still the most secure way to store the hundreds of millions of names contained within the vault.”
