Johnny Gruelle

History

John Barton Gruelle was born in Arcola, Illinois, on December 24, 1880. A the age of two, he moved with his family to Indianapolis, Indiana, where his father, Richard Gruelle, who was a painter, became associated with the Hoosier Group of painters. Richard Gruelle’s friends included poet James Whitcomb Riley, whose poems “The Elf-Child”, later titled “Little Orphant Annie” (1885) and "The Raggedy Man" (1888), would form the basis for Johnny Gruelle's naming of Raggedy Ann.

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, including The Toledo News-Bee, The Pittsburgh Press, The Tacoma Times, and The Spokane Press.

After he beat out 1,500 entrants to win a cartooning contest sponsored in 1911 by The New York Herald, Gruelle created Mr. Twee Deedle, which was in print from that year to at least 1914.

Gruelle biographer Patricia Hall notes that according to oft-repeated myth, Gruelle's daughter Marcella brought from her grandmother's attic a faceless doll on which the artist drew a face, and that Gruelle suggested that Marcella's grandmother sew a shoe button for a missing eye. He then combined the names of two James Whitcomb Riley poems, "The Raggedy Man" and "Little Orphant Annie" and suggested calling the doll Raggedy Ann. 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 rural Connecticut. In reality, as Gruelle's wife Myrtle told Hall, it was Gruelle who retrieved a long-forgotten, homemade rag doll from the attic of his parents' Indianapolis home sometime around the turn of the 20th century. 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."

The couple's daughter, Marcella, had not yet been born when Gruelle found the doll, Myrtle Gruelle continued. Johnny Gruelle "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."

Additionally, Hall notes, Marcella died at age 13 from an infected vaccination, not from the side effects of the vaccination itself, and Gruelle did not then create the limp Raggedy Ann doll as a tribute to his lifeless daughter, as another myth states. Gruelle's patent application for the Raggedy Ann doll was already in progress, and the artist received final approval by the U.S. Patent office the same month as Marcella's death. Regardless, some journalistic sources repeat the myth.

In 1915, Gruelle patented and trademarked the design and name. The U.S. Patent D47,789 was dated September 7, 1915. Gruelle began approaching publishers and in 1918, the P.F. Volland Company published Raggedy Ann Stories, promoting it with a Raggedy Ann doll. Both became major successes. In 1920, Gruelle introduced Raggedy Ann's brother, the mischievous and adventuresome Raggedy Andy, in the book Raggedy Andy Stories. Gruelle was awarded a patent for a stuffed animal in 1921 U.S. Patent D59,553.

Gruelle's "Raggedy Ann's Sunny Songs" was set to music by William H. Woodin. One of Gruelle's characters is Little Wooden Willie, a reference to Will Woodin.

Gruelle lived in the Silvermine section of New Canaan, Connecticut, where the dolls were first mass-produced and later moved his home and company to neighboring Wilton, Connecticut. Gruelle spent a year in Ashland, Oregon, from 1923 to 1924. He died at home in Miami Springs, Florida, on January 9, 1938, of heart failure .