Morris Michtom

Morris Michtom (* in the 1870s in Russia) was the inventor of the teddy bear.

In 1887 he emigrated as a Jewish refugee to New York. He married Rose and opened a small shop in Brooklyn, New York.

On November 18, 1902, the Washington Post published a cartoon about President Theodore Roosevelt's refusal to shoot a captured bear.

Morris designed a stuffed toy bear, sewed the rose and stood in the window with the cartoon. In 1907 she founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company.