The large home at 1211 Winnie was once a much smaller cottage property. Known as the Wenk Brothers Tenant House, it was built in 1886 as a one-story frame house. 

 It was built by brothers Jacob “Jake” Wenk (1844-1898) and Joseph “Jo” Wenk (1851-1920). It featured a central hall plan, a small front porch, and a full west porch. 

 Born in Quebec, Canada, the Wenks established themselves as well-respected merchants on Galveston Island, first working for other dry goods companies and eventually establishing their own. 

 Jacob was the first to gain success on the island in a partnership with Jacob Sonnenthiel. His brother Joseph worked for the firm as a clerk. By 1878, the siblings operated Wenk Brothers on Market Street, offering gentlemen’s furnishings. 

 The brothers expanded to establish their own stores, selling the same goods as before but in two locations. 

 Jacob’s storefront, Jake Wenk and Sons, was operated by his son Wolfe. The store was located on Market Street between 21st and 22nd streets. Joseph’s store was located on Tremont Street between Market and Postoffice streets. 

 The brothers constructed and owned the tenant house at 1211 Winnie as a partnership in 1886. In March 1892, the brothers sold the Wenk house to harbor pilot Captain Sebastian Drouet (1839-1898) and his wife, Josephine Chambard (1842-1915). The couple continued to operate it as a tenant dwelling. 

 

 Sebastian and Josephine emigrated from France as small children with their families. Before their marriage in 1865, a Galveston city directory lists the two families as living only four blocks apart. 

 The captain, a veteran of the Confederacy during the Civil War, and his wife resided on the southwest corner of Sealy and 10th Street. As their family grew, they moved to 1803 Avenue O. 

 The series of individuals and families who rented the Winnie property from the Drouets reflect the diverse array of citizens in Galveston at the time.

 Bookkeeper William B. Hix, born in 1857, was the first occupant to be listed at the address in the 1893-1894 city directory. He was followed by a more prominent occupant the next year. 

 From 1895 to 1897, the home was occupied by Daniel D. Atchison (1820-1898). Atchison was one of Galveston’s early lawyers, a Supreme Court clerk, and a friend of Sam Houston. 

 Atchison came to the island in May 1846, two years after graduating from the Dane Law School at Harvard. He partnered with United States District Attorney George W. Brown, specialized in admiralty law, and served in the Supreme Court of Texas for 12 years. 

 When Sam Houston came to the Tremont House hotel in Galveston after he was removed as governor of Texas to make his famous last speech in April 1861, entreating Texans not to join the Confederacy, Atchison acted as one of his escorts to ensure his security. 

 Atchison resided in the main house at the same time as an African American widow named Carrie Shaw, a dressmaker, who lived in a small dwelling at the rear of the property. 

 Elbert Carson Lamb (1869-1931) and his wife Florence Louis Davis (1872-1958) lived in the home for the following two years with their four children, Arthur Jefferson, Seth Scofield, Carrie Irene, and Elbert Davis. Lamb operated a grocery store at 2609 Market. 

 In 1898, the rear dwelling was occupied by William E. Blanton (1869-1930), a clerk at the hardware store of John Stoddart Brown (son of James Moreau Brown, builder of Ashton Villa). He lived there with his wife Amanda Hawk (1874-1954) and their two daughters. 

 From 1899 to 1900, the tiny abode in the rear was the home of an African American laborer named William Williams and his wife, Mollie, a servant in the Lamb household. 

 Lamb left Galveston with his family following the 1900 Storm. Bruno Rohner (1874-1923), a pastry cook from Poland, and his wife Anna Patton Dixon (1871-1968) then took up residency in the main house. 

 Rohner and his partner, William A. Green, owned the West Market Bakery at 2705 Market. The Rohners lived in the home for a year before moving to Ball Street, when Bruno began working for Harvey House as a baker at the railroad depot. 

 The last rental of the property was the family of John B. Richard (1852-1914), a painter of French-Canadian heritage who had recently become a naturalized citizen. He lived in the home in 1902 with his wife Aglae Larocque (1862-1923) and their four children, Arthur, Felix, Alfred, and Viola Pearl. 

 That year, Florence McKee (1882-1942) became the second African American dressmaker to live and work at the rear of the property. 

 In February 1903, widowed Josephine Drouet sold the property to William Joseph Knapp (1870-1927) and his wife, Adelaide Seraphina Ganter (1873-1960). Adelaide’s father was Bernard Ganter (1843-1921), a pioneer Galveston resident and jeweler who resided in the house next door to the east. The couple and their four children used the home as their private residence. 

 Cincinnati native Knapp and his siblings owned the lucrative Knapp Brothers Commercial Printers & Stationers. 

 By the 1910 census, the small main house had become the residence of eight people, including the six Knapps, Adelaide’s father, and a boarder. This situation understandably inspired an enlargement of the house. 

 In May 1911, the Knapps elevated the original 1886 structure onto two-foot-wide brick piers, creating a new ground floor and transforming the original house into the second floor, where its portico and front door remain visible today.

 This expansion brought the home to nine rooms, two halls, one tiled bathroom, one closet, a kitchen pantry, and three porches, as noted in insurance records. The following year, a one-story addition was constructed on the southwest side, further enlarging the house. 

 William passed away in 1927, and Adelaide rented her extra rooms to boarders in the 1930s and 1940s. 

 In 1940, she added a one-story automobile garage in the southeast corner of the lot. In 1947, she divided the home into four existing one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments and expanded the downstairs porch. 

 In November 1952, her nephew Charles Bernard Ganter (1904-1971) and his wife Christine Sumter (1910-2002) assumed ownership of the Winnie home. The young couple moved into one of the apartments and rented the other three to tenants. 

 The house has changed hands multiple times since the Ganters sold it in 1963 but is still currently configured as a fourplex and maintains the original hardwood floors and tall ceilings. 

 It remains a charming and well-kept representation of the history of the East End District, painted an inviting blue and surrounded by a neat white picket fence.