Ross Winans (1796–1877) was an American inventor, mechanic, and builder of locomotives and railroad machinery. He is also noted for design of pioneering cigar-hulled ships. Winans, one of the United States' first multi-millionaires, was involved in national and state politics, a southern-sympathizer and was a vehement "states' rights" advocate. Winans was briefly arrested after the Baltimore riot of 1861. His outspoken anti-federal stance as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, the lower chamber of the General Assembly, (state legislature) led to his temporary arrest on May 14, 1861. At the time of his arrest, Winans was returning on a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad train from an early session of the legislature that was being held in the western Maryland town of Frederick to avoid the Union Army-occupied state capital of Annapolis in April–May 1861 to consider the possibilities of state secession during the early decisive period of the American Civil War. Winans was related to James McNeill Whistler through marriage (Whistler's brother George married Winans' daughter Julia).
Early life
Ross Winans was born in Vernon Township, New Jersey on October 17, 1796. His parents were William and Mary Winans. He married Julia de Kay (1800-1850) in 1820 and they had five children. He moved his family to Baltimore, Maryland in the late 1820s and did business with the newly founded Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B. & O.).
Following the death of his wife Julia in 1850, he married Elizabeth K. West (1807-1889) in 1854.
Railroad Work
Winans came from a New Jersey family of horse breeders, but successfully made the transition to other forms of motive power.
In 1828 he developed a friction wheel with outside bearings which established a distinctive pattern for railroad wheels for the next one hundred years or so. In the late 1820s also he became associated with the B&O, eventually entering their service as an engineer. One of his first and more important tasks was to help the famous inventor and industrialist Peter Cooper, (1791-1883), of New York City build the new revolutionary "Tom Thumb" steam-powered locomotive, to eventually replace the horse-drawn rail cars then being pulled along the short route of the Baltimore and Ohio that had been built so far - from the city's waterfront temporary depot facing "The Basin" (today's "Inner Harbor") at East Pratt Street and South Charles Streets to the southwest 20-some miles to its first terminus at Ellicott Mills on the upper Western Branch of the Patapsco River. By 1831, he was appointed assistant engineer of machinery on the B. & O. He invented and patented an improvement in the construction of axles, or bearings on July 20, 1831. Also in this productive year he built the "Columbus", his first double-truck car, which he immediately patented, even though it is widely known he stole the idea for after the original inventor failed to do so.
In 1835, Winans went into partnership with George Gillingham and in 1836 they succeeded to the 1834 lease of Phineas Davis and Israel Gardner of the B. & O. Company's shops at Mount Clare and continued the manufacture of locomotives and railroad machinery. "As far back perhaps as the year 1836, the firm of Gillingham and Winans, and, after the dissolution of that firm, I myself, down to 1841 or 1842, manufactured a Rail Road Wheel..." (letter #322).
In 1841, he opened his own shop adjacent to the B. & O.'s new Mount Clare Shops, along West Pratt Street, between Arlington and Schroeder Streets in southwest Baltimore, with that railroad as his primary customer. He was a pioneer in the development of substituting coal-burning steam locomotives, for the less efficient wood-burners. He was eccentric, and his locomotive business made him independently wealthy. His customer relations were simple—he built engines his way, and you bought them. Bored with the business, and having a design disagreement with the B. & O., he closed his shops, which were later leased to the Hayward, Bartlett, and Co. iron and steel foundries. He went on to do significant work for the Czar's railroad from the new imperial capital St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea to the old traditional medieval capital of Moscow in central Russia. All of the listed engines are type 0-8-0, called the "Camel." They were all acquired from predecessor roads. Engine sales to the Cumberland and Pennsylvania Railroad (C. & P.) were recorded in 1863. James Millholland, the C. & P. Master Mechanic, was familiar with keeping these "Camel" engines running, and making improvements to them.