Saint Johnsville Community Website

The mural, painted in oil, that hangs in the St. Johnsville Post Office lobby, was installed on April 29, 1940. It is titled Early St. Johnsville Pioneers. It was painted by Jirayr Hamparzoom Zorthian, who was awarded a WPA (Works Progress Administration) contract for $700 on August 1, 1939. Born of Armenian parents on April 14, 1911, in Kütahya, Western Anatolia, Ottoman Empire, Zorthian escaped through Europe with the remnants of his family after two waves of political massacres, and arrived in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1923. He earned a Master of Fine Arts at Yale University (where he had a full college scholarship to the Yale School of fine arts, and studied art in Italy in the 1930s. Returning to the United States during the Great Depression, he painted several massive murals, including 11 for the Tennessee State Capitol in 1938 which earned him the honorary title of “Colonel.” He died January 6, 2004, at the age of 92.

The St. Johnsville, New York, Post Office mural depicts three periods in the colonization of the Mohawk Valley from the arrival of the white fur trader to the Revolutionary War. On the left, are the indigenous Mohawks, in the center, the Palatine immigrants, on the right, a settler family surveys the ruins following a raid on the valley.