Product Description: The noun “reflection” has several meanings. A reflection can be “the throwing back by a body or surface of light, heat, or sound without absorbing it,” as in the reflection of light from a mirror. But to “reflect” can be so much more, as when a person considers something in a deeply spiritual or meditative way...read more

Product Description: 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...read more

Product Description: More than 88 milliion Americans can claim to be of German descent. My maternal great grantparents, Johannes and Katharina Berghöfer, came from Hesse Nassau, Germany, to the United States in 1880 with their five children. This book is both family history and an investigation of my German-American heritage...read more

Product Description: 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...read more

Product Description: This is the story of the era when the premier cheesemaking region of the United States was in Central New York, chiefly in the Mohawk Valley. Here it was that Jesse Williams set up the first cheese factory in 1851 in Oneida County...read more

Product Description: Confined to a nursing home in Iowa in 1960, a time-worn horseman seeks to educate his grandson about the great transformation in American agriculture when horse power gave way to tractor power (1910-1950). Walt Decker spent nearly four decades as the chief national defender for the continued use of draft horses on the farm, especially Percherons...read more

Product Description: Abolitionists met on October 21, 1835, in Utica, NY, to form The New York State Anti-Slavery Society. Rioters forced them to go to Peterboro, New York, where Gerrit Smith welcomed them. This book tells the story of the Utica and Peterboro conventions and reproduces the Minutes of this historic event...read more

Product Description: This bonanza of 260 short essays harvests the "Reflections" columns written by Dr. Milton Sernett over a period of more than a quarter century for the newsletter of Faith Lutheran Church, Cicero, New York. The essays, rooted in the author's memories of a Midwestern youth, his three decades as a professor of history and religion at Syracuse University, and his own faith pilgrimage among family and friends take their inspiration from John Wesley's famous metaphor of spiritual renewal--"Heart Strangely Warmed...read more

Harriet Tubman is one of America’s most beloved historical figures, revered alongside luminaries including Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History tells the fascinating story of Tubman’s life as an American icon. The distinguished historian Milton C. Sernett compares the larger-than-life symbolic Tubman with the actual “historical” Tubman. He does so not to diminish Tubman’s achievements but rather to explore the interplay of history and myth in our national consciousness. Analyzing how the Tubman icon has changed over time, Sernett shows that the various constructions of the “Black Moses” reveal as much about their creators as they do about Tubman herself.Three biographies of Harriet Tubman were published within months of each other in 2003–04; they were the first book-length studies of the “Queen of the Underground Railroad” to appear in almost sixty years. Sernett examines the accuracy and reception of these three books as well as two earlier biographies first published in 1869 and 1943. He finds that the three recent studies come closer to capturing the “real” Tubman than did the earlier two. Arguing that the mythical Tubman is most clearly enshrined in stories told to and written for children, Sernett scrutinizes visual and textual representations of “Aunt Harriet” in children’s literature. He looks at how Tubman has been portrayed in film, painting, music, and theater; in her Maryland birthplace; in Auburn, New York, where she lived out her final years; and in the naming of schools, streets, and other public venues. He also investigates how the legendary Tubman was embraced and represented by different groups during her lifetime and at her death in 1913. Ultimately, Sernett contends that Harriet Tubman may be America’s most malleable and resilient icon.

Chronicling the career of Beriah Green (1795-1874), theologian, educator, reformer, and one of New York's most important abolitionists, this book is the first published history of Green and his attempt to create a model biracial society. (view table of contents)

Product Description: The compelling and wide-ranging tale that examines the moral choices made by blacks and whites of New York State to aid the newly freed slaves to secure the promise of freedom. The North Star was both an astronomical reference guiding slaves north to freedom, and a symbol of the moral enterprise that sought to end slavery...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Bound for the Promised Land is the first extensive examination of the impact on the American religious landscape of the Great Migration—the movement from South to North and from country to city by hundreds of thousands of African Americans following World War I...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

(view table of contents)

A history of black folk religion includes an analysis of American Evangelicalism and the ways it was adapted, translated and changed by black Christians and a description of plantation missions