Garret Ellis Winants

Garret Ellis Winants was born on Staten Island. His ancestries were Dutch, English, and French. When Garret was nine years old, his father, Captain Peter Winants, died in a shipwreck. Without any insurance, Garrets’ mother and his five siblings were left with only a few thousands of dollars.

 In his early age, Garret was deprived of education. The children, however, had a privilege to farm. This kept him and his brothers and sisters busy working. At the age of eighteen, Garret had left his family to live independently. He hardly received any education and had not a single friend. After his teen years, he had followed in his father footsteps and sailed the sea.

When he was nineteen years old, Garret and a few people joined building him a freighting schooner of forty tons burden, which was named Gilletta. For three years passed and struggles occurred. Garret nearly lost his life due to a shipwreck in Long Island. That did not stop him continuing though. After all that chaos, he managed to equip five steamboats, which he charted to the United States government for war purposes. One of the reasons was being placed in revenue department of the port of New York. The other three boats were placed on the coast of North Carolina, South Carolina and, the James River. The last boat was carrying the United States military mail between New Orleans, Galveston, and Brazos de Santiago.

Attracted by Jersey City's waterfront of steamboats from Europe. Garret gave development. As well, he became a large owner of real estate in the New York City, Plainfield City, Elizabeth City, Hudson City, Hoboken City, and Bergen Point, New Jersey. 

Garret was married to Amanda on February 10th,1841. She was the daughter of James Miller and Abigail Bridge. In total, they had four children together. In 1862, Garret retired from the business and devoted his time to traveling around the world with his wife. 

He was also well known throughout the state of New Jersey, in many places due to his writings. His journals that were published were in volumes titled “Journal of Travels over the Continents of Europe Asia and Africa.” Another of the volumes was “The Island of the Sea,” which was published in 1872. Later in 1877 “Around the World” was published too.

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