Take a hike through the Mohawk Valley near the town of Canajoharie and you will find yourself at the “gateway to the west,” between the Adirondacks and Catskills, following in the footsteps of Algonquin, Mohicans and Mohawks, British and French troops, colonists, farmers and industrialists. At some point, the mountainous landscape and charming homes will have you reaching for your camera. If you are lucky enough to draw, you will reach for your sketch pad.

Others before you have wanted to document the area and their place in it. This was especially true around the time of America’s Independence Centennial, when the successors of the early settlers and the immigrants who worked at the many factories in the Mohawk Valley were reveling in prosperity. About the same time, Rufus Alexander Grider and Fritz Vogt appeared on the scene wielding pencils and crayon with authority.

Interestingly, the artists came from two walks of life. Grider, an intellectual, and Vogt, a drifter, would not have been friends. They did, quite likely, know of each other’s works, as their time in the Mohawk Valley overlapped somewhat. Their personal stories provide a colorful background to their extensive bodies of work.

Grider arrived in Canajoharie from Pennsylvania in 1883 at the age of sixty-six, after having successfully run a hotel, a vineyard and a dry goods store. While it sounds as though he skated from career to career, Grider was, in fact, typical of his generation. Born in Lititz, PA, of Moravian parents, he had a strong work ethic and an abiding interest in the community. He had been head of a horticultural association and active in the Civil War drafting procedure.

A widower with two still young daughters, Grider seems to have wished for nothing more than an active retirement as an amateur historian and art teacher at the Canajoharie Academy. Installed in a light filled studio on the third floor of the Academy, Grider taught art until his retirement in 1888. He then concentrated ever more intensely on history and drawing until his death in 1900.

Fritz Vogt was only 48 when he arrived in Canajoharie in 1890. Little is known about him other than that he was a German immigrant, who worked as laborer or commercial artist, depending on the season, his rheumatism and drinking issues.

A likeable local celebrity who left nothing in the way of a photograph or self-portrait, Vogt is said to have been a small man who traveled by foot in shoes made of sewn carpets, slept in barns sandwiched between two buffalo pelts, and sometimes accepted food as payment for his work. He spoke English with a German accent, played the organ and had a jocular disposition.

Stylistically, Professor Grider had a thoughtful, refined hand that frequently gave way to chronological annotation. Fritz Vogt was a vernacular artist whose drawings were always complimentary, often colorful and quite detailed.

During Professor Grider’s seventeen years in Canajoharie, he produced more than twenty-four hundred water colors, drawings and copies of historic documents along with hundreds of hand-written notes about his subjects.

The Samuel Campbell powder horn, showing the Hudson River. On its banks are New York City and Albany. The owner's name is misspelled on the horn and Grider's annotation makes note of it. New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections.

He documented American military history, religious and musical history, education, architecture, the folk arts and local and exotic flora. He committed to paper the designs of intricately engraved powder horns, often traveling far afield to view them. He also created “memory” paintings of structures destroyed during the Revolutionary War. These were, of course, based on the memories of people he interviewed. He included their signed testimony in each of the works.

The irony is, despite Grider’s copious output, relatively few of his drawings were ever published. Only a handful of Twentieth Century historians have seen original Rufus Grider works. The New York Historical Society holds more that five hundred of Grider’s drawings of engraved powder horns. A Chicago institution owns a collection of his Native American drawings. Still other collections reside in small museums and private hands. Rarely have any been exhibited.

Possibly, Rufus Grider’s fame is at hand. A few years ago, when a volume of botanical and family drawings surfaced on the Antiques Roadshow, experts gave it an extremely high value. It was enough to bring many more to light.

In contrast, Fritz Vogt was “discovered” in the 1950′s by Monte Foster, a resident and dealer of Palantine Bridge, New York. In 1968, he was the subject of Karen Wells’ MA/PhD thesis. Ms. Wells, of the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, relied largely on Foster’s collection for her research. In the 1970′s, thirty-seven of Vogt’s drawings were auctioned and his place in the world of folk art secured.

Vogt is credited with creating approximately three hundred portraits of homes, farms, churches, factories, stores and gravesites. Many still hang on the walls of the homes and buildings they illustrate.

Truly an itinerant, Vogt went from house to house looking for work. His pieces were often completed in two or three days, as he did not have the luxury of a studio or a permanent home.

Stylistically, Vogt’s works were pleasing. In the early days, he worked in black and white, suggesting to some that he may have had a career as commercial artist or engraver. The early images also hint at German Romanticism with its sentimentality and distant vistas.

Around 1894, he began adding touches of colored pencils and crayons. This may have begun as a clever attempt to outwit the photographers with whom he competed for commissions. They worked fast but only in black and white.

David Longshore's Farmers Hotel in Canajoharie, as drawn by Fritz Vogt. Colored and graphite pencil on paper . from the collection of Frank Tosto.

Overall, Vogt’s drawings evoked sunny days during which homes and farms stood in precisionist perfection surrounded by flowers in full bloom and trees abundant with greenery – even in winter. He added children and barnyard animals and cozy touches such as smoke rising from a kitchen chimney, thus hinting at the making of a fine dinner.

The artist never drew the daily toil. Nor did he include adults in his drawings. As his style evolved – or perhaps as a result of his advancing rheumatism or even drink – Fritz Vogt’s drawings became looser and more stylized.

As with many artists who live on commissions, Vogt played to his audience. He always put the property owner’s name prominently along bottom of the drawings. He also dated and signed the drawings work, usually on the right.

Vogt worked in multiples, sometimes making adjustments that would better show desirable elements. For instance, on a second or third drawing, he might raise the porch to show all the windows. These multiples were often secondary commissions for relatives of the consigner.

Rufus Grider also tended towards multiples. In his case, he was keeping with the Moravian tradition of doing things in triplicate.

Rufus Grider never charged for his drawings, but it is notable that as a school teacher he too made about two dollars a day.

The drawings of both Grider and Vogt are now priceless for insights and information they impart.