One of the first cartoonists is known to be Emile Chole. He has done traditional animation which means that he drew everything from scratch. This is known to have been shown in the year 1908. There are some reports stating that cartoons were created decades before that. In fact, the first cartoonist may be Charles Emile Raynaud.
He created cartoons in order to support what he was doing at that time. It may seem ironic that one of the first cartoonists was also a Science teacher. He did it to show the power of the Praxinoscope. He was also able to show a public animation in the year 1892.