Dr. Milton C. Sernett is a historian who grew up in the tall corn state of Iowa. He taught at Syracuse University for three decades and then retired to pursue a lifelong interest in agricultural history. He has authored fifteen books, including ones on the transition from horse to tractor farming, the history of cheesemaking in New York State, and the origin of the Holstein breed of dairy cattle in the United States. Known as "the Sage of Lawyersville," Jared van Wagenen, Jr. (1871-1960) lived at Hillside Farm in Schoharie County in eastern New York State. A graduate of Cornell University (Class of 1891), he witnessed the advance of mechanized farming and the eventual dominance of corporate agriculture. A self-proclaimed "dirt farmer" with the gifts of a philosopher, he championed the family farm and an agricultural civilization where humane values were prized over profit. Van Wagenen's book THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOMESPUN is an American classic. In this book, Sernett takes a walk thorough the changing landscape of American agriculture with Jared van Wagenen, Jr. as his guide and mentor. Van Wagenen was a insightful historian as well as a expert farmer and lived by a creed expressed in an essay written for THE AMERICAN AGRICULTURALIST shortly before his death: "Looking Back is One of the Best Ways of Looking Forward"
About the Author: Dr. Milton C. Sernett (b. 1942) grew up in Hampton, Iowa. He attended Concordia College, St. Paul, 1961-62 before transferring to the Senior College at Ft. Wayne, Indiana. He is a graduate of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, (M.Div. 1968), and received the M. A. & Ph.D. in American History from the University of Delaware (1969; 1972. He joined the faculty of Syracuse University in 1975 after teaching church history for three years at Concordia Theological Seminary, Springfield, Illinois. Sernett is currently Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and History and Adjunct Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. His principal areas of teaching and research have been African American religious history, the American South, the abolitionist movement, the Underground Railroad, and American social reform movements. Sernett was a Research Fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, in 1988-89. In 1994-95 he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Free University, Berlin, Germany. He has been a member of the New York State Freedom Trail Commission and is on the Cabinet of Freedom of the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, Peterboro, New York. Prof. Sernett joined the emeriti ranks of Syracuse University faculty on May 15, 2005. He teaches an online Underground Railroad course and a course on the history of American abolitionism during his retirement. Sernett has published fifteen books and numerous scholarly essays. Among his books are the classic text African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness; North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom, and Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, & Freedom. Now retired, Dr. Sernett has published books on topics as diverse as a history of cheesemaking, the transition from horsepower to tractors on American farms, and a study of the origin of the Holstein breed of dairy cattle. His most recent book focuses on changes in American farming with the master farmer Jared van Wagenen, Jr., as guide and mentor.