Aaron Garrigus was born around 1849 in New Jersey to Isaac Garrigus and Sarah Shepard. His father was a farmer. The family lived in Chatham, New Jersey, until the 1850s, when they moved to Morris, New Jersey. By 1870, he was working as a sash and blind maker in Waterbury, Connecticut, and a decade later, he was working as a laborer in Passaic, New Jersey. He died sometime after 1900.