Naomi:
The apostle John was a Jew, as is indicated by his familiarity with Jewish opinions.
He was a native dweller in the land of Palestine, as is indicated by his thorough acquaintance with the country. The details mentioned concerning places named indicate personal knowledge of them. He referred to “Bethany across the Jordan” (John 1:28) and ‘Bethany near Jerusalem.’ (11:18) He wrote that there was a garden at the place where Christ was impaled and a new memorial tomb in it (19:41), that Jesus “spoke in the treasury as he was teaching in the temple” (8:20), and that “it was wintertime, and Jesus was walking in the temple in the colonnade of Solomon” (10:22, 23).
The writer was an apostle. No one but an apostle could have been eyewitness to so many events associated with Jesus’ ministry; also his intimate knowledge of Jesus’ mind, feelings, and reasons for certain actions reveals that he was one of the party of 12 who accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry.
Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen, all of whom were of the late second and early third centuries, testify to John’s writership
This portion was taken from
http://www.apostle.org/lectures/johnlife.htm
The Christian writers of the second and third centuries testify that the Apostle John lived in Asia Minor in the last decades of the first century and from Ephesus had guided the Churches of that province. In his "Dialogue with Tryphon" Justin Martyr refers to "John, one of the Apostles of Christ" as a witness who had lived "with us", that is, at Ephesus. Irenæus speaks in very many places of the Apostle John and his residence in Asia and expressly declares that he wrote his Gospel at Ephesus and that he had lived there until the reign of Trajan. Eusebius and others place the Apostle's banishment to Patmos in the reign of the Emperor Domitian (81-96).
Previous to this, according to Tertullian's testimony, John had been thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil before the Porta Latina at Rome without suffering injury. After Domitian's death the Apostle returned to Ephesus during the reign of Trajan, and at Ephesus he died about A.D. 100 at a great age. He expressed a willingness to undergo martyrdom - as did the other apostles - and is accordingly called a martyr in "intention." Some stories say that, although he was imprisoned and exiled for his testimony to the Gospel, he was eventually released and died a natural death in Ephesus: "a martyr in will but not in deed."