Peter Weschler asked:

"I'm struggling to know where to begin. All I know is that my father's side
of the family originated in a town in which the name phonetically sounds
like 'seret.'
Can anyone help with this?"

I believe the town you're looking for is Siret, which is in
northeastern Suceava County in northeastern Romania, right next to the
border with Ukraine. It is 23 miles NNW of the town of Suceava. It was
formerly in Bukovina province, and you can see it as "Sereth" on this
1910 ethnographic map of Bukovina:
http://www.bukovinasociety.org/map1910.html

Here is a link to the Wikipedia article on Siret:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siret

And here is the YIVO Encyclopedia article:
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Siret

Good luck with your research!

Susan Steeble
Baltimore, MD

Researching: FREEDHAND/FRIEDHAND/FRIEDGANT (Bershad, Ukraine > NY and CT,
Romania, France);
KESSELMAN (Chorna/Krasny Okna, Ukraine > NY); KAHAN (Grodno [now Belarus]

NY);

STUCHINSKY (Yurburg and Taurage [now Lithuania]); SLUTSKY/SLOTE (Kiev,
Ukraine > NY);
BODNAR (Mihaileni, Romania > Israel); GELBER and SCHECHTER (Bucecea, Tirgu
Neamt, and Iasi, Romania > Israel)