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The genealogical research she conducts in her spare time is the magical gift she's giving her family. As she conjures up the past, gleaning what pertinent information she can from such documents as birth records, death certificates, marriage certificates, obituaries, and the like, she brings it all together. The pieces become part of a highly elaborate puzzle she is weaving together, using genealogical wizardry.
"It's addicting," she says of her historical hobby. "You just get so excited when you put an ancestor with the right family, when you find a birth record or marriage certificate. I was so excited when I found my grandparents' marriage certificate. From those, you get maiden names and another part of the puzzle is filled in," she explained.
Equipped with an eye for the old, she's set out to capture and keep the history of her family name in the hearts of its surviving members, both on paper and in pictures. A self-described amateur, her re-creation of the past has resulted in a working reference manual that's sure to be handed down for generations to come. Because she acquired the genes that give her a meticulous eye for perfection, a striking sense of attention to detail and organizational skills that rival Martha Stewart's, she is her family's go-to gal for genealogy and she bears great gifts for those who are interested.
Unfortunately, though, Cummings is unable to simply rub a magic lamp and have all the answers appear before her. Her journey is a challenging one, full of digging, fraught with searching, scratching, chipping and chopping and, once in a while, gleaning a golden nugget, the reward that keeps her coming back for more.
For example, while researching her parents' backgrounds, she found a newspaper clipping of W.E. Adams' obituary from 1934, listing her father Henry Pearson as a pall bearer at his funeral. "Mr. Adams is a huge part of Deadwood's history, and my father, was always low-key and would never have bragged about something like this. So, of course, he never told us about that. So to discover a newspaper clipping that he'd saved and obviously treasured with his things was priceless. Especially considering the fact that he and my mother worked together at the Adams Company and that's how they met," she said.
From this fabulous find, she moves on, looking for the next nugget.
Weaving together fact to fact, in an attempt to eliminate any fiction, Cummings started small and dreamed big in order to make her collection of black and white pictures come to life. And she's clearly found the key to making them jump off the pages. With such vital statistics as hair color, eye color, and height, gleaned from, for example, military records, she is able to at least add depth and color to stationary subjects and develop her own mental picture of her maternal grandfather.
The original copy of his military records, which she found as she began sorting her treasures, was more a bit of trivia for her before she got hip to the gene scene. Once she knew what she was doing, she discovered it held a wealth of information, ultimately leading her to her grandfather's birth place in Long Prairie, Minn., last summer and several more pieces of the puzzle were revealed, as she unearthed all the records concerning him and his siblings.
Comprised of what is clearly "Deadwood DNA," part Pearson and part Gibson, she is a member of an immediate five person family whose forefathers set up shop in Deadwood, way back in the 1800s. Descendants of Deadwood pioneer families on both sides, paternal grandparents Luella and William Pearson married and settled in Deadwood in 1893 and maternal grandparents, Harry and Mary Ellen Gibson, married in 1908 and later lived in the Terraville and Roubaix areas. Cummings' parents, Henry William, who was born in Deadwood in 1897, the youngest of two children, and Marie (Gibson) Pearson, who was born in Terraville in 1924, the fourth of six children, were married in 1949 and lived at several different addresses in Deadwood, including 376 Main, 99 North Williams, 408 Main Street above Pearson's Grocery, which her father, Henry, owned and operated for many years, and 382 Main Street after selling the grocery store. All three still residing outside of Deadwood in Boulder Canyon, Faunille, Billy and Pam are the three Pearson children that were the gift of this marriage.
But the gift of doting grandparents and the history they inevitably share with their grandchildren was never afforded her. It is this gift that was never bestowed upon her that drives her to do what she does.
"What actually sparked my interest in genealogy was that I've always wanted to know more about my family history because of not having grandparents. Both of my grandfathers died when my parents were small children, my mother's when she was 9 and my father's when he was 14. My grandmothers were ailing by the time I was old enough to visit with them about these matters. But it was the 2002 Grizzly Gulch Fire that was the catalyst, the thing that got me going. We were evacuated from our home for eight days. When I came back, I went through boxes of family stuff that I'd never gone through before and found priceless treasures that would have burned and I wouldn't have even known they were there. So I said, 'I need to start organizing these things.'"
Fortunately, pictures and postcards were both a well-preserved and prized possession for Faunille's family and the desire to identify and date these timeless treasures is where her journey began. She knew she could find answers in cemeteries and courthouses, so she jump-started her genealogical journey on her own, with a visit to the resting place of her paternal great grandparents in Chambers, Neb.
Because Chambers no longer has a courthouse, she ended up in the county courthouse in O'Neill, Neb., and researched further. She was also afforded a gold mine of information, courtesy of the cemetery's historical society, which had numbered all the graves and cross-referenced family members. It is by this means that she was able to find out not only about the great grandparents she originally intended to research, but also found out about several other extended family members that no one knew existed.
On a mission to get her hands on any records she could find, she also visited the local library in O'Neill and looked up obituaries on microfilm. So without any formal training, she was able to collect invaluable information about these family members through gravestones, death certificates and obituaries, which fueled her fascination and filled in a few pieces of the puzzle.
Next, encouraged by her findings and also realizing she was at a dead end without some formal genealogical instruction, she took an Introduction to Genealogy course at the Grace Balloch Memorial Library in Spearfish, taught by Renata Coates. There, she learned more avenues to information and also how to use the Internet as a tool.
"This course was invaluable as far as taking my research to another level. I learned which Web sites to use and how to access archived census data. If you have an idea of where a family member lived, you can go to that county's census records. For example, using census data, I was able to find out more about my maternal grandmother, whose mother and sister died when she was 9. She was raised by a postmistress in Sturgis for awhile, then sent to St. Martin's convent in Sturgis."
With fires either sparking her desire to research or putting a damper on it, Cummings also found out that the entire 1890 census was completely destroyed by fire, which had a huge impact on her research. "If someone was born or died between 1880 and 1900, you can't find out about them with census information," she explained.
So, where does this determined DNA-driven genealogical novice suggest others begin? "Start by writing down your family tree as far back as you can on both sides, including birth dates and birth places of as many people as you can," Cummings suggested. Her top three tips for beginning your genealogical journey? "Number one: Start with your parents, if they are still living, and try to trace your family tree as far back as you can. Ask dates, maiden names and if your parents are no longer alive, talk to as many surviving family members as you can. Number two: If you know the counties your family members resided in, obtain as much as you can from the county courthouses in those areas. This is where you will gain the most knowledge, because all of the records are there. Number three: Use ancestry.com and its Census data information," she offered. Cummings also explained that the Genealogy course she took helped a lot and she plans to take the Advanced Genealogy course when it is offered.
She also plans to continue her genealogical quest, this time heading for the East Coast and a city called Fisherville, New Hampshire, where she discovered some of her ancestors arrived out west from. Feeling that she's at the end of the trail in the Midwest, she plans on obtaining any court records she can, in yet another town that's fallen off the map and just so happens to be the birthplace of one of her maternal grandfathers. Her ultimate goal is to compile a comprehensive family tree and she's on the way to doing just that, housing much of the information she gleans on her Family Tree Maker software program, which she says is widely available in stores.
Today, Faunille enjoys a secluded haven, surrounded by family heirlooms and lives out her legacy on beautiful Black Hills family property, along with her husband, Kevin.
"I am blessed to live on property that my grandmother, Luella Pearson, had the foresight to purchase all those years ago," she said. Her most treasured family heirloom is a curio cabinet, complete with curved glass and in immaculate condition, which also belonged to her grandmother Luella, the top shelf housing close-up photos of her mother and father in their younger days. "I grew up with this in my bedroom. I've had it my entire life and my parents used to warn me about the curved glass, telling me to be extra careful with it because it couldn't be replaced. This is my most treasured family heirloom. I love it."
From perusing grave yards to searching through tombs of court records and clearly going where none of her siblings have gone before, some things that have surfaced serve to feed the insatiable curiosity regarding her family history that exists within Cummings - the type of curiosity that comes with uncovering your roots, digging up the past and determining who's who. Cummings definitely carries a torch for her family's history ... a fitting description for one who was thrust on to the gene scene, with her passion for the past sparked by a wildfire.
