More than 88 milliion Americans can claim to be of German descent. My maternal great grantparents, Johannes and Katharina Berghofer, 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. By the time that I was born in 1942 in Hampton, Iowa, the German culture which shaped my mother and her parents had all but disappeared. This book is written so that their story can be remembered by succeeding generations."

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...

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. This collection of essays, both the memory mediations and the historical articles, are gathered here so that you, the reader, might spend some time on the path of contemplation. The "reflections" were initially distributed to worshippers at the First United Methodist Church, Cazenovia,...