Courtesy Horseheads Historical Society
Courtesy Chemung County Historical Society
The artist at work: Eugene Zimmerman’s cartoons are on exhibit at the Chemung County Historical Society.
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The Illustrated Zim
The Legacy of Cartoonist Eugene Zimmerman Is On Display in Chemung County By Karey Solomon
H
e wasn’t born, as they say, with a silver spoon in his mouth. Swissborn Eugene Zimmerman—a cartoonist and illustrator known to the world as “Zim”—learned early that if he wanted food and survival he had to earn them by his own efforts. That he could do so with his sense of humor intact, bootstrapping his way to national prominence and international renown, and also become a local benefactor, is as amazing as his prolific output. An exhibit highlighting his scope— “From Pencil to Page: Eugene “Zim” Zimmerman’s Creative Process”—is on display at the Chemung County Historical Society, 415 West Water Street, Elmira, through September. Zimmerman’s house at the corner of Pine and Mill Streets in Horseheads, willed by his daughter, Laura, to the Horseheads Historical Society, is
open Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday afternoons through most of the year. Born in 1862, Zimmerman was orphaned two years later when his mother died. The toddler was sent to live with an aunt and uncle while his father and older brother set off for America. Five years later, worried about the dangers of the FrancoPrussian war, his uncle put him on a ship for America. The seven-year-old made his way to Paterson, New Jersey, and somehow found the bakery where his father and brother were working. In order to remain, he had to earn his keep. “You might say his childhood was unsettled,” says Chemung County Historical Society curator Erin Doane. Always happiest outdoors, and a lifelong hunter and fisherman, for a time in his early teens he hired out to work for a farmer in upstate New York, where, despite
his diligence, he was not treated well. One story has it that, back in Paterson, the lettering on a cake he was decorating drew the attention of an itinerant sign painter, William Brassington, who offered him an apprenticeship. They traveled to Elmira to work at the Chemung County Fair and apparently liked their surroundings, because they stayed. Zimmerman worked for Brassington until his shop closed, then worked for other sign painters. He got his first break when his uncle showed his sketchbook to someone from Puck magazine, a well-known satirical weekly. Then twenty years old, he was hired to be one of their cartoonists. When the art director there took a job at Judge, a competing news magazine, Zimmerman went along. He signed his drawings “Zim,” later joking he’d freed the “merman” back into the ocean. When he searched for an See Zimmerman on page 32
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