Sernett Story

This is the story of the search for my Czech or Bohemian heritage. My father was of Czech ancestry, but his death in 1950 when I was only seven created a situation where my mother's German American heritage was more intact. Beginning with a sketch of the history of the Kingdom of Bohemia, I trace the sojourn of my Czech Srnec (Sernett) ancestors from the Old Country to America where they eventually settled in Iowa. Most became farmers in Pocahontas County. My father Lee Louis Sernett (1892-1950) moved to Hampton, Iowa, in 1927 and two years later began operating a gas station. So it was that I grew up not on a farm but in a small town in farm country in the upper Midwest. During those decades I was exposed to the remnants of my mother's German-American heritage. This book is an attempt to discover and recover the Bohemian/Czech side of my family story.
About the Author: Iowa. He attended Iowa State University at Ames for a year and then enrolled at 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. Prof. 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. Prof. Sernett joined the emeriti ranks of Syracuse University faculty on May 15, 2005. He continues to teach an online Underground Railroad course and a course on the history of American abolitionism during his retirement. Sernett has published seventeen 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. Sernett received the Distinguished Africanist Award from the New York African Studies Association in 2009. Sernett received the Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Concordia University, St. Paul, Minnesota at the graduation ceremonies, May 13, 2011. He retired in 2005 after teaching for thirty years at Syracuse University. Since then, I have gone back to my Iowa roots and longtime interest in agricultural history. I have published books on topics as diverse as a history of cheesemaking, the transition from horsepower to tractors on American farms, a study of the origin of the Holstein breed of dairy cattle, and an overview of the changes in American farming with the master farmer Jared Van Wagenen, Jr., as guide and mentor. His most recent book is Family Matters: Exploring my German American Heritage.