John T. McCutcheon

John Tinney McCutcheon (May 6, 1870 – June 10, 1949) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American newspaper political cartoonist who was known as the "Dean of American Cartoonists".

McCutcheon was born near South Raub, Tippecanoe County, Indiana to Captain John Barr McCutcheon and Clara Glick McCutcheon. He was the younger brother of novelist George Barr McCutcheon, writer of the Graustark books. His son, Shaw McCutcheon was an editorial cartoonist.

He attended Purdue University, where he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity, and graduated in 1889 with a Bachelor of Science degree. At Purdue, he worked with typographer Bruce Rogers on the student newspaper and yearbook. On the Purdue campus, McCutcheon is memorialized in a coeducational dormitory, John T. McCutcheon Hall. The lobby displays an original of one of his drawings, a nearly life-size drawing of a young man.

McCutcheon moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked at the Chicago Morning News (later named the Chicago Record) and then at the Chicago Tribune from 1903 until his retirement in 1946. In 1907, his famous cartoon, "Injun Summer," was first published. It would make annual appearances in the Tribune for decades.

During World War I, McCutcheon worked as a correspondent and combat artist, flying over battlefields in a bi-plane to research and then provide artwork about the war for publication.

From 1916 to 1979 the McCutcheon family owned Blue Lagoon Island, a cay off Nassau in the Bahamas. In 1917, McCutcheon married Evelyn Shaw, the daughter of his friend Howard Van Doren Shaw, despite being twenty-four years older. McCutcheon introduced Carl Sandburg to the Bahamian song The John B. Sails which subsequently became a standard.

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