Learn Karen Evans' Back Out Down DNA tree-building method

Below are excerpts from notes made by Helen Tovey on Karen Evans' presentation at the August 2024 DNA Club meeting. The concept of building out your family tree, in order to use it to help to identify your DNA matches is widespread. Karen refers to it as the 'Back Out Down' method, which she says, light-heartedly, sounds as though it's instructions for dog-training. Read on to see how it can help your DNA research however. The recording of Karen's video presentation is available to members in the Family Tree Plus Library.

How to get your family tree DNA ready

Here are Karen Evans' top take-away tips.

Back-Out-Down – This is Karen’s method of getting your tree DNA ready.

Step 1. Build your tree back in time (this is the aspect of tree-building that most family historians are familiar with)

Step 2. Grow your tree out (by marrying off the siblings of your ancestors)

Karen’s further tips & insights on growing out your family tree: Growing out your tree is a very large task, so it can pay to be methodical as to how you approach the matter of finding the marriages of your ancestors’ siblings.

• You may like to work through it branch by branch.
• You may wish to concentrate on branches that have more unusual names, or you feel more confident.
• It can be a good idea to focus on the females first – as their surnames change more.
• Look for ‘hot spots’ in your tree – these are areas on your tree with large families producing lots of children, some of whom went to North America or Australasia (as DNA testing is particular popular in these areas)

Step 3. Grow your tree down (as you reach more recent times this can prove harder, as documentation may not be available online for more recent generations).

This is the nub of it: Growing your tree down is absolutely important, because it is the descendants of your ancestors who will be taking DNA tests today – ie who will be your DNA matches.

By tracing your tree down, forward in time, you will be much more easily able to identify your DNA matches.

One last tip, and warning, from Karen: “Be prepared! Your DNA might create more questions than answers on your tree.”

About genealogist Karen Evans

Author and family historian Karen Evans tutors on the topic of DNA for family history, is the Family Tree Plus DNA news anchor, writes the monthly DNA Workshop column in Family Tree, and presents on the topic of DNA and other family history and history topics. Find out more at https://www.publicspeakerscorner.co.uk/karen-evans/