Biography:

John T. Ruoff has been identified as the New York publisher of the cartoon “Southern Ass-Stock Crazy” by several print dealers, though not by the Library of Congress. A John T. Ruoff, bookkeeper, is listed in the 1860 federal census, living in Hoboken, New Jersey. This is likely the John T. Ruoff identified by print dealers, since, in addition to his wife and two young children, Ruoff had two lithographers, Lewis Newmaker and Otto Wagner, living in his household. Ruoff was age twenty-eight in 1860 and the census gives his birthplace as Nuremberg. In 1870 he appears as John F. Ruoff and is living in Putnam, Connecticut, where he worked in a woolen mill. He does not appear in the 1880 federal census.