William Donahey, creator of the Teenie Weenie cartoons, was born in Westchester, Ohio, on October 19, 1883, to John C. and Letitia (Chaney) Donahey. After graduating from the Cleveland School of Art in 1903, he worked briefly in advertising before joining the staff of the Cleveland Plain Dealer as an artist; his brother James was the paper's political cartoonist. Also on the staff was Mary Dickerson, a special writer for the Sunday issue and later an author of juvenile fiction. Donahey and Miss Dickerson were married on August 16, 1905.
Donahey began to specialize in children's cartoons for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Reacting against the physical violence then current in cartoons like “The Katzenjammer Kids,” he first illustrated Mother Goose rhymes and then his own verses and stories. When these productions came to the attention of James Medill Patterson of the Chicago Tribune, Patterson offered him a regular position as a cartoonist. For the Chicago Tribune, Donahey created the Teenie Weenie cartoons about a self-sufficient society of people only two inches tall. Their hallmarks were gentility, a dedication to hard work, and a simple morality. “The Teenie Weenies” were published in the Sunday comics from 1914 to 1970, except during the post-World War I paper shortage, which lasted for about ten years. The strip was syndicated in newspapers throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Cuba. It became the oldest comic series continuously drawn by the original author.
The popularity of the cartoons was so great that, as early as 1917, the first Teenie Weenie book was published; more than a dozen followed, and some were translated into French, Spanish, and Portuguese. In the 1920s there was a good market for Teenie Weenie toys and dolls. And, in 1925 the Reid-Murdoch Company introduced a line of Teenie Weenie canned goods, among which were peanut butter, pickles, and sardines.
Until his death in 1970, Donahey continued the Teenie Weenie cartoons. His wife wrote many feature articles about his cartoon characters until her death in 1962.
