Johnny Gruelle was born ‘John Barton Gruelle’, on 24th December 1880, in Arcola, Illinois, U.S.A. He was an American artist, political cartoonist, children’s book author, illustrator and songwriter. Gruelle is best known as the creator of Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy.
John Gruelle’s cartoons first appeared in print in the Indianapolis Star in 1905. From 1906 to 1911, his cartooning work appeared in many newspapers, usually signed as ‘Grue'.
One day, Gruelle gave his daughter (Marcella) a dusty, faceless rag-doll – which she had found buried in the attic. He drew a face on the doll and named her Raggedy Ann. Marcella played with the doll so much that Gruelle figured other children would like the doll too. This was the birth of Gruelle’s emblematic piece of Children’s literature.
Gruelle’s Raggedy Ann doll’s U.S. Patent was dated 7th December 1915. Three years later, in 1918, the ‘PF Volland Company’ published Raggedy Ann Stories, and Gruelle went on to create an extremely popular series on the same theme, as well as a further collection of Raggedy Ann dolls. These became Volland’s major source of revenue. Gruelle was an extremely talented illustrator as well as author, and often had such confidence in his designs that he would create the final ink work without first sketching in pencil. One such example is his masterful, Nobody’s Boy – illustrations for Hector Malet’s Sans Famille.
(source: https://www.pookpress.co.uk/project/johnny-gruelle-biography/)