Early Life
Winsor McCay was born Zenas Winsor McKay. He claimed to have been born in Spring Lake, Michigan in 1871, but his gravestone says 1869 and census reports state that he was born in Canada in 1867. He was the son of Janet Murray McKay and Robert McKay, who at various times worked as a teamster, a grocer, and a real estate agent. Winsor was named after his father's employer, Zenas G. Winsor, and he quickly dropped Zenas in favor of Winsor. He was raised in Michigan, where he began drawing at an early age. At the age of 13 he drew a picture of a shipwreck on the school blackboard; it was photographed and copies were sold. His attention to (and memory of) detail was known to be advanced.
In 1886, McCay's parents sent him to Cleary's Business College in Ypsilanti, Michigan to learn to be a businessman. While in Ypsilanti, he also received his only formal art training, from John Goodison of Michigan State Normal College (now known as Eastern Michigan University). Goodison taught him the strict application of the fundamentals of perspective, which he put to significant use later in his career.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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