Foster M. Follett, Cartoonist

From the September 30, 1899 issue of Collier’s Weekly magazine

Foster M. Follett was born in Sandusky in the 1870s, to Foster Valentine and Portia Follett. Both Foster M. Follett’s father and grandfather served in the 128^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. The grandfather, also named Foster Morse Follett, was an early Health Commissioner of Sandusky, who worked tirelessly during the 1849 Cholera Epidemic; he died in 1862. Foster Valentine Follett died when his son was only ten years of age.

For more than forty years, the younger Foster Morse Follett was an artist and cartoonist. His work appeared in The New York World, The Saturday Evening Post, Life Magazine, and Collier’s Weekly. Several Follett cartoons about the character “Tidy Teddy” are featured on the website of Barnacle Press. He also created some animated short subjects in 1916 and 1917. Two characters from Mr. Follett’s early animated films were “Quacky Doodle” and “Mr. Fuller Pep.” 

These cartoons appeared on pages 178 and 179 of the August, 1903 issue of Life Magazine. The cartoons follow a hunter who caught a lion. After trying to get a photograph taken, both the hunter and photographer can be seen running away in the distance.

In 1937, a short while after he was involved in an automobile accident, Foster M. Follett died in Richmond, Virginia. He was survived by his wife the former Nettie Bell, and three children. His obituary appeared in the February 21, 1937 issue of the New York Times.