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Canajoharie is a small village on the Mohawk River/Erie Canal in Montgomery County in upstate New York. Current village population is 2,300; the larger geographic Town of Canajoharie has a population of 3,910; our school district population is 6,196.
The name "Canajoharie" is a transliteration of a Mohawk Indian word meaning "the pot that washes itself." The name refers to a geologic pothole in the bed of the creek that empties into the Mohawk River in the village.
The area was first settled by Europeans in the 1700s with the migration of the Palatine Germans into the Schoharie and western Mohawk Valleys. During the American Revolution Canajoharie was part of the frontier with ongoing fighting that would today be described as "horrific geurrilla warfare and ethnic cleansing" carried on between the patriots, the tories and their Iroquois allies.
Prosperity and development came after the Revolution. The opening of the Erie Canal in the 1820s brought rapid growth to many canal towns as it allowed for the transportation of agricultural products out and brought industry in. Agriculture has remained as a major industry, with dairy farming the predominant form. Sheep, beef, field corn and fruits and vegetables are also grown locally.
Industrial development in the late 1800s centered around the Arkell and Smiths sack factory. This company pioneered the development of the paper flour sack during the Civil War. Unfortunately, this industry left the village in the 1950s.
For all of the 20th century Canajoharie has been known as the home of the Beech-Nut factories. Started in the 1890s as a small firm that packaged the locally famous smoked ham of a village resident, the company expanded rapidly under founding president Bartlett Arkell to become a major player in the food processing industry. Today Beech-Nut manufactures its baby food in Canajoharie, and an independent candy maker, Richardson Brands, manufactures candy products in the old Beech-Nut plant #2.
With its stable industrial base the population of the area has remained relatively stable for 100 years. Agriculture, service sector industries including banking and insurance, and a growing interest in tourism, indicate a continued prosperous outlook for our village.
The Canajoharie Library was born in the 1880s when a committee of local dignitaries organized a lending library in the drawing room of the Arkell home. By the early 1900s the library had moved first to a school room and then to rented space downtown. In 1914, under the sponsorship of local industrialist Bartlett Arkell, the library was granted its charter by New York State.
Mr. Arkell's interest in the library grew over the next 10 years, and in 1925 he had the original section of the current facility built, and presented it to the village in memory of his father, state Senator James Arkell. Mr. Arkell continued to be invloved in library activities until his death in the 1940s. An endowment that he originated remains an important source of income for the library.
The art gallery was founded in 1924, as a public art museum, under the sponsorship of Bartlett Arkell, the first president of Beech-Nut Packing Company. Between 1924 and the opening of the Gallery in 1926, Mr. Arkell visited several museums of art in the United States and Europe and borrowed elements of three galleries for his own art gallery. These were the European Paintings Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Prince George Gallery at the Walker Art Museum in Liverpool, England and the gallery that housed the Night Watch at the Rijkesmuseum in Amsterdam, Holland.
From 1926, until his death in 1946, Mr. Arkell acquired and donated some of the finest American paintings he could acquire. Many of these paintings reflect his own individual taste and include many landscapes of places he found very familiar. Having been born in Canajoharie, a small agriculturally based town in the Mohawk River Valley, many of the landscapes he bought were of rural New York State and the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers in particular. As a student in private schools in Massachusetts and at Yale University, the collector came to admire the New England Landscape. Later, when he bought a summer house in Manchester, Vermont in the 1920s, his love of New England grew, as did his interest in New England landscapes. Lastly, his many trips to Europe each winter, with the exception of the period from 1914-1918 and after 1938, he would visit the low countries, England and France and many of the landscapes he acquired were from these areas.
In terms of painters, Mr. Arkell bought many paintings by Winslow Homer, one of his favorite artists, Childe Hassam and the group of painters known as the Vermont Regionalists. He was close personal friends with Herbert Meyer, Jay Connaway, Luigi Luicioni, and Ogden Pleissner. He commissioned several artists to paint his houses in Vermont and New York (On 10th Street in Manhattan) and knew many of New York's most important artists through his long standing association with the MacBeth Gallery in New York.
The collection is strong in terms of works by Winslow Homer, American Impressionist Painters and American Watercolor Painting. As with many collections founded prior to World War II, it also abounds in portraits of famous men and of the type of woman he found attractive, women with dark hair and eyes. All three of his wives had such hair and eye color. The latter two, the former Louisanna Grigsby and Louise Ryals, were both artists in their own right and took lessons with various New York artists.
The decorative arts collection evolved out of Mr. Arkell's desire to acquire objects of good taste, sculpture, furniture, glass and pottery to place in the library and art gallery. Toward this end, he acquired sculpture from American and French sources, including works by Saint Gaudens, Frishmuth and Remington. He acquired La Laque vases for flower arrangements in the museum and replica furniture made locally for the art gallery. For the Library, many of the early pieces of furniture were from the Stickley Company, then located in Syracuse, New York.
The Memorial Garden was concieved by Mr. Arkell in 1929. The garden was planned by Bartlett and his wife, Louisanna Grigsby Arkell, for a vacant lot between the library and the neighboring Lutheran Church. Mrs. Arkell passed away while the garden was in development, and Mr. Arkell dedicated the finished garden to her memory.
The garden consists of formal barberry hedges, evergreens and flowering shrubs that frame a fountain and reflecting pool. The centerpiece of the fountain is a 7 foot bronze sculpture of a woman by Harriett Frishmuth titled "Humoresque".
The fountain and gardens are scheduled for a major restoration in 1999 - 2000. To contribute to this cause please see Support and Development.
Since the beginings described above the Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery has continued to grow and to provide outstanding library and museum services to our community and region. Today art exhibits from the permanent collection and guest exhibits line the gallery walls and a full range of traditional and computerized library services are offered.
The facility has also expanded over the years. The first major expansion took place in the 1960s with the doubling of library space, the development of the historical collections, and storage for the art collection. In the late 1980s a second building project again greatly expanded both the library and gallery space.
We are now beginnig the process of developing a master plan for future building needs. We expect to again add to the collections storage, exhibition and library facilities.
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Created October, 1998.
Send e-mail to Eric Trahan, Director, at can_traha@sals.edu
Copyright © 1998, Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery. All Rights Reserved.
