Harold Gray
Harold Lincoln Gray (January 20, 1894 – May 9, 1968) was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the newspaper comic strip Little Orphan Annie. He is considered to be the first American cartoonist to use a comic strip to express a political philosophy.
Early life
Harold Gray was born in Kankakee, Illinois on January 20, 1894, to Estella Mary (née Rosencrans) and Ira Lincoln Gray, a farmer. Both parents died before he finished high school in 1912 in West Lafayette, Indiana, where the family had moved. In 1913, he got his first newspaper job at a Lafayette daily. He could trace his American ancestry back to 17th-century settlers. He grew up on farms in Illinois and Indiana, and worked in construction to pay his college tuition at Purdue University. He graduated with a degree in engineering by 1917.
Gray approached cartoonist John T. McCutcheon for advice on breaking into the cartooning field. He couldn't immediately get cartooning work, but McCutcheon's influence got him work as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune before he enlisted in the military for World War I, where he was a bayonet instructor for six months. Discharged from the military, he returned to the Chicago Tribune and stayed until 1919 when he left to freelance in commercial art. In 1923, while residing in Lombard, Illinois, he became a Freemason.
