RootsChat.Com

I suppose it depends why you wanted to research your family at all - so many people don't!

I'm with Carole in that there is no need to destroy a tree of which at least 50% is correct and presumably more than that if you have researched your paternal grandmother's ancestors.

However, if you are mainly interested in researching your surname, I can see it is a massive disappointment. On the other hand, these kinds of discoveries add to the intrigue, surely? I love finding out "irregular" stories as it all adds to the dectective work!

One suggestion though - if you have only used the DNA test within 23andMe, that will restrict the possible matches available. You would have to pay for an additional test if you wanted to check matches on Ancestry, but it might be worth uploading your results onto, e.g. MyHeritage as they take imported results and, in my experience, have a very different set of possible matches from the other sites I've used.

I'll certainly confirm the late dates of unofficial name changes. In my family three children took the name of their stepfather, one of whom hyphenated it with his birth name, one reverted to his own name and the other stayed with the new surname and passed it down. This was around 1900.

Added - sorry to spoil the run of contributers' names but I actually am Angela

Not really - I just like to show off!! Genealogy is fascinating but sometimes DNA only adds to my confusion.

Me too, Mbp56..... me too 

And if you look at exactly the same entry on your main computer and on your smartphone, you get the same result or not?

If it's happening with all media, I think I'd try accessing Ancestry from a different machine to see where it's your account or the computer/tablet or whatever.