If you merge a commit into your branch, you should get all the history between.
Observe:
$ git init ./ Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/dfarrell/git/demo/.git/ $ echo 'a' > letter $ git add letter $ git commit -m 'Initial Letter' [master (root-commit) 6e59e76] Initial Letter 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) create mode 100644 letter $ echo 'b' >> letter $ git add letter && git commit -m 'Adding letter' [master 7126e6d] Adding letter 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) $ echo 'c' >> letter; git add letter && git commit -m 'Adding letter' [master f2458be] Adding letter 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) $ echo 'd' >> letter; git add letter && git commit -m 'Adding letter' [master 7f77979] Adding letter 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) $ echo 'e' >> letter; git add letter && git commit -m 'Adding letter' [master 790eade] Adding letter 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) $ git log commit 790eade367b0d8ab8146596cd717c25fd895302a Author: Dan Farrell Date: Thu Jul 16 14:21:26 2015 -0500 Adding letter commit 7f77979efd17f277b4be695c559c1383d2fc2f27 Author: Dan Farrell Date: Thu Jul 16 14:21:24 2015 -0500 Adding letter commit f2458bea7780bf09fe643095dbae95cf97357ccc Author: Dan Farrell Date: Thu Jul 16 14:21:19 2015 -0500 Adding letter commit 7126e6dcb9c28ac60cb86ae40fb358350d0c5fad Author: Dan Farrell Date: Thu Jul 16 14:20:52 2015 -0500 Adding letter commit 6e59e7650314112fb80097d7d3803c964b3656f0 Author: Dan Farrell Date: Thu Jul 16 14:20:33 2015 -0500 Initial Letter $ git checkout 6e59e7650314112fb80097d7d3803c964b3656f $ git checkout 7126e6dcb9c28ac60cb86ae40fb358350d0c5fad Note: checking out '7126e6dcb9c28ac60cb86ae40fb358350d0c5fad'. You are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around, make experimental changes and commit them, and you can discard any commits you make in this state without impacting any branches by performing another checkout. If you want to create a new branch to retain commits you create, you may do so (now or later) by using -b with the checkout command again. Example: git checkout -b new_branch_name HEAD is now at 7126e6d... Adding letter $ git checkout -b B 7126e6dcb9c28ac60cb86ae40fb358350d0c5fad Switched to a new branch 'B' $ git pull 790eade367b0d8ab8146596cd717c25fd895302a fatal: '790eade367b0d8ab8146596cd717c25fd895302a' does not appear to be a git repository fatal: Could not read from remote repository. Please make sure you have the correct access rights and the repository exists. $ git merge 7f77979efd17f277b4be695c559c1383d2fc2f27 Updating 7126e6d..7f77979 Fast-forward letter | 2 ++ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+) $ cat letter a b c d