I got a terrific gift this weekend. I got it from an American guy with whom I share the same, somewhat unusual family name.

This fellow, my 10th cousin, decided to do the genealogy thing when he retired as an officer in the US military. Only he decided to do it not for his immediate family but for the whole clan which, as it turns out, represented a tree with four main branches.

I found his website in 1999 and contacted him, giving information of my family going back but two generations. My great-grandfather died well before my dad was born and, in those early days, there was a disconnect and so my dad, who’s now 90, knew very little of his grandfather.

I contacted my American friend this weekend to ask if he’d found out anything further and I got an e-mail back within a few hours. There were three attachments and my jaw dropped as I began reading.

I now know my lineage, unbroken, going back 18-generations. In truth, I know one generation further back but only just. Turns out he was a Teutonic Knight, one of a force that reached the Swedish island of Gotland somewhere around the early to mid-1200s. Apparently he was in the conquering and pillaging business before he retired to England. The trail, with names, addresses and full details, picks up in 1275 in Yorkshire.

My American cousin took partial strands of information he gleaned here and there and matched them up using census, tax, parish and land records to verify the connections. Then, and here’s the good part, he started a DNA project by which he’s been able to biologically trace each of the four branches. That’s how he confirmed my branch from Germany to Gotland to England to Canada.

My mom’s buried in the “family plot” in Leamington, Ontario. After her funeral my kid brother and I went to the town hall to get burial records and found, not only the graves of the immediate relatives we knew, but also a handful of “unknowns” shown on the chart. A mystery – until yesterday. We now know who the unknowns are. They’re my family’s direct line since their arrival in Canada in the early 1800s. My American cousin knew all about them, even down to where each is buried.

I began the weekend knowing really nothing of my past beyond the life of my grandfather and ended the weekend with a roadmap going back to Edward I and beyond. Mind-boggling.

The whole thing is a tribute to a guy who devoted his retirement to this project and learned how to harness the internet and DNA science to his search. I now know the outline of my family story and maybe, someday I’ll be able to find out more and add to it.