John Barton Gruelle (December 24, 1880 – January 9, 1938) was an American artist, political cartoonist, children's book and comics author, illustrator, and storyteller. He is best known as the creator of Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls and as the author/illustrator of dozens of books. He also created the Beloved Belindy doll. Gruelle also contributed cartoons and illustrations to at least ten newspapers, four major news syndicates, and more than a dozen national magazines. He was the son of Hoosier Group painter Richard Gruelle.
Early life and education Gruelle was born in Arcola, Illinois, on December 24, 1880, to Alice (Benton) and Richard Buckner Gruelle. Reprint edition, Evansville, Indiana: Whipporwill Publications, 1985. In 1882, when Gruelle was two years old, he moved with his parents to Indianapolis, Indiana, and settled in a home on Tacoma Avenue in what is the present-day Lockerbie Square Historic District. The Gruelles made Indianapolis their home for more than twenty-five years.
Gruelle was exposed to art and literature at an early age. His father, Richard, was a self-taught portrait and landscape painter who became associated with the Hoosier Group of American Impressionist painters. In addition to Richard Gruelle, the informal group included William Forsyth, T. C. Steele, Otto Stark, and J. Ottis Adams. Another Gruelle family friends was Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley, whose poems "The Elf-Child," later titled "Little Orphant Annie" (1885), and "The Raggedy Man" (1888), eventually formed the name for John Gruelle's iconic Raggedy Ann character. Gruelle later honored Riley's memory in his own book, The Orphant Annie Story Book (1921), written in tribute to Riley's famous poem.
Gruelle was the eldest child of the Gruelle family, which also included a younger sister, Prudence (1884–1966), and a brother, Justin (1889–1979). Gruelle's parents exposed all three children to music, literature, and art. John, who likely attended public schools in Indianapolis as a youth, became interested in art, and learned drawing from his father.Hall, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, pp. 28, 31–33. See also, Hall, "A Child At Heart," pp. 5–6. Prudence trained as a vocalist in New York City, performed in vaudeville theaters, and married Albert Matzke, an illustrator and watercolorist. She also became an author of children's books and a syndicated newspaper columnist. Justin studied art in Indianapolis and New York City and became a landscape painter, illustrator, and muralist.Gugin and St. Clair, eds., pp. 142, 144.
Marriage and family Nineteen-year-old Gruelle met his future wife, Myrtle J. Swann, in Indianapolis, where they were married on March 23, 1901. Marcella, the first of their three children, was born on August 18, 1902, and died on November 8, 1915, at age 13.Hall, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, pp. 48–50, 89. The Gruelles also had two sons, Worth, who became an artist and illustrator, and Richard "Dick" Gruelle.Hall, "A Child At Heart," pp. 6, 8, and 12. Gruelle's widow, Myrtle (Swann) Gruelle Silsby, who remarried for a brief period in 1945, died on April 25, 1968, at the age of eighty-three.Hall, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, pp. 187, 190.
John and Myrtle Gruelle began their married life in Indianapolis and moved with their young daughter to Cleveland, Ohio.Hall, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, p. 50. By 1910 they had left Cleveland and moved to the Norwalk, Connecticut, area, where Gruelle's parents had acquired a property in Silvermine, a present-day historic district and art colony along the Silvermine River comprising sections of Norwalk, New Canaan, and Wilton, Connecticut. Gruelle and his family initially lived in a studio maintained by his father and brother on the former site of the Blanchard Fur Factory until they built a home in the Wilton section of Silvermine. See also: Gruelle's parents, his sister and her husband, and his younger brother also made their home in the Silvermine area. After the death of their daughter, Marcella, in 1915 from an infected smallpox vaccine, John and Myrtle Gruelle moved with their two sons to Norwalk.Hall, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, p. 93. In addition to being closer to his family, Gruelle's relocation to the East Coast provided him with additional opportunities for freelance work in newspapers and magazines as an artist and journalist.Hall, "A Child At Heart," pp. 7–8.
Gruelle also spent a year in Ashland, Oregon, from 1923 to 1924.
Career
Gruelle began his career as an illustrator and cartoonist for Indianapolis newspapers. His work was eventually syndicated nationwide. He also completed commissions for illustrations of well-known fairy tales, as well as writing and illustrating his own stories. Gruelle is best known as the creator of a series of stories about a rag doll named Raggedy Ann and her friends. He also created the iconic Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls. In addition to becoming a successful commercial artist and illustrator, cartoonist, writer, and businessman, Gruelle was a nature-lover, storyteller, and spiritualist.Hall, "A Child At Heart," p. 5.
Early years
In the early years of his career Gruelle created political cartoons and single-frame sports comics that appeared in Indianapolis newspapers such as the Indianapolis Star and the Indianapolis Daily Sentinel. In 1903 he became assistant illustrator for the Star.Hall, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, p. 40. Within a few months his political cartoons of a top-hatted crow began to appear on the front page of the Star with witty comments for the day. Gruelle's crow figure also became the Star'''s weather bird and continued to appear on the newspaper's front page even after Gruelle's death in 1938. (The bird was initially named "Jim Crow," but it was renamed "Joe Crow" in the 1950s.)
From 1906 to 1911, Gruelle's cartoons, usually signed as Grue, appeared in other city newspapers, such as The Toledo News-Bee, the Pittsburgh Press, the Tacoma Times, the Spokane Press, and the Cleveland Press. Gruelle's big break came in 1910–1911, when his two entries for a full-page, comic-drawing contest sponsored by the New York Herald won first and second place among the submissions from 1,500 entrants. His first-place entry, "Mr. Twee Deedle", was syndicated in weekly installments nationwide until 1918.
As Gruelle earned notoriety as a cartoonist for the Herald, he also pursued writing and illustrating his own fairy tales. His first major illustrating commission was a single-volume edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales (1914) that included Gruelle's artwork for eleven full-color plates. In other early commission work he illustrated and retold other fairy tales that included the stories of "Cinderella," "Little Red Riding Hood," and "Hansel and Gretel," among others. He also wrote and illustrated My Very Own Fairy Stories (1917), published by P. F. Volland Company, a publisher of inspirational cards, gifts, and books.Hall, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, p. 96. See also: Hall, "A Child At Heart," p. 8. Beginning with these early stories, Gruelle typically used a "fairy-story-with-a-moral format" to teach the ethical lessons that became a trademark of his work. Gruelle also created a cartoon series in 1917 called Quacky Doodles, produced as part of Bray Productions' weekly Paramount Pictograph productions.
Creator of Raggedy Ann
The exact details of the origins of the Raggedy Ann doll and related stories are uncertain.Hall, "A Child At Heart," p. 10. Gruelle biographer Patricia Hall notes that according to an oft-repeated myth, Gruelle's daughter, Marcella, brought from her grandmother's attic a faceless rag doll on which the artist drew a face, and that Gruelle suggested that Marcella's grandmother sew a shoe button for a missing eye. Hall says the date of this supposed occurrence is given as early as 1900 and as late as 1914, with the locale variously given as suburban Indianapolis, Indiana, downtown Cleveland, Ohio, or Wilton, Connecticut. More likely, as Gruelle's wife, Myrtle, told Hall, Gruelle retrieved a long-forgotten, homemade rag doll from the attic of his parents' Indianapolis home sometime around the turn of the 20th century, a few years before the couple's daughter was born.Hall, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, p. 107. As Myrtle Gruelle recalled, "There was something he wanted from the attic. While he was rummaging around for it, he found an old rag doll his mother had made for his sister. He said then that the doll would make a good story." She further explained that her husband "kept [the doll] in his mind until we had Marcella. He remembered it when he saw her play [with] dolls.... He wrote the stories around some of the things she did. He used to get ideas from watching her."
Hall notes another unproven legend states that Gruelle began writing and illustrating the Raggedy Ann stories while his daughter was gravely ill from complications resulting from an infected vaccination, and her death at age 13 inspired him to publish the stories and create the rag doll as a tribute to her memory. Another version of the doll's origins suggests that it appeared as a character in an illustrated poem in one of Gruelle's earlier books. Some journalistic sources have continued to repeat the various myths and legends.
A few of the details about the Raggedy Ann doll and its origins are documented. On September 7, 1915, the U.S. Patent Office approved , Gruelle's May 28, 1915, patent application for the design of the prototype that became the Raggedy Ann doll. Gruelle's patent application for the doll's design was already in progress around the time that his daughter, Marcella, became ill. The artist received final approval for the U.S. patent the same month as her death. On June 17, 1915, Gruelle applied for a trademark logo for the Raggedy Ann name, which he formed from a combination of names from two James Whitcomb Riley poems, "The Raggedy Man" and "Little Orphant Annie." The P. F. Volland Company published Gruelle's Raggedy Ann Stories (1918), the first in a series of books about his Raggedy Ann rag-doll character and her friends. Both became major successes.Burnet, pp. 195. The book's first edition also included Gruelle's own version of the doll's origins and the related stories.
Although the female members of Gruelle's family may have made initial versions of the Raggedy Ann doll in Norwalk, Connecticut, to help market the related books, Gruelle soon established a merchandising agreement with P. F. Volland Company, his primary publisher, to begin manufacturing, selling, and promoting a mass-produced version of the doll. Raggedy Ann books and dolls became major successes. Two years later Gruelle introduced Raggedy Ann's brother, the mischievous and adventuresome Raggedy Andy, in Raggedy Andy Stories (1920). Gruelle also patented his design for a generic male doll (). A short time after its literary debut, Raggedy Andy appeared as a Volland-made doll.Hall, "A Child At Heart," p. 11.Hall, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, p. 118. Gruelle was also awarded design patents for two duck toys in 1915. is based on his character "Quacky Doodles" and is based on his character "Danny Daddles."Hall, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, pp. 94–95. In addition, Gruelle applied for a stuffed elephant toy () in 1920 and a stuffed bear toy () in 1921.Hall, Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy, p. 135.
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