Seth Woodbury MacFarlane is his full name.¹⁾

Seth Woodbury MacFarlane was born in Kent, Connecticut on October 26, 1973.²⁾

Ronald Milton MacFarlane and Ann Perry, his parents, were born in Newburyport, Massachusetts.³⁾

Rachael Ann MacFarlane, a voice actor, is his sister (born 1976).⁴⁾

He has New England ancestors dating back to the 1600s, and he is a descendent of Mayflower passenger William Brewster.⁵⁾

MacFarlane's parents met in 1970 while both living and working in Boston, Massachusetts, and married the following year.⁶⁾

Ann began working in the Admissions Office at South Kent School when the couple relocated to Kent in 1972. She went on to work in the College Guidance and Admissions Offices at the Kent School, a prestigious college preparation school where Ronald taught.⁷⁾

MacFarlane took a passion in artwork during his youth and began sketching cartoon characters Fred Flintstone and Woody Woodpecker as early as two years old.⁸⁾

MacFarlane knew he wanted to be an animator at the age of five, and he began by making flip books after his parents acquired a book on the subject for him.⁹⁾

MacFarlane began creating a weekly comic strip titled “Walter Crouton” for The Kent Good Times Dispatch, a small newspaper in Kent, Connecticut, four years later, at the age of nine.¹⁰⁾

MacFarlane claimed in an October 2011 interview that as a youngster, he was always “weirdly captivated with the Communion ceremony”.¹¹⁾

He made a comic strip with a figure kneeling at the altar receiving Communion and asking, “Can I have fries with that?” ”. The paper published it, and he received a “angry letter” from the local priest, resulting in “kind of a little mini-controversy” in town.¹²⁾

MacFarlane graduated from the Kent School in 1991 with a high school diploma. He continued to play with animation while there, and his parents got him an 8 mm camera.¹³⁾

MacFarlane went on to acquire a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in cinema, video, and animation from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).¹⁴⁾