Sarah Winchester

Sarah Lockwood Winchester, the only known photograph of her from her time at the mansion.

File:Sarah Lockwood Winchester.jpg

Sarah Lockwood Winchester likeness from museum

Sarah L. Winchester (September 1839 – September 5, 1922), was an heiress and the builder of the Winchester Mystery House.

Early life

She was born in Connecticut as Sarah Lockwood Pardee, a daughter of Leonard Pardee and his wife Sarah W. Burns. On September 30, 1862 in New Haven, Connecticut, Sarah married William Wirt Winchester, the only son of Oliver Winchester, the owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The couple had one daughter, Annie Pardee Winchester, who was born on July 12, 1866, but died after a few weeks. Sarah fell into a deep depression following the death of her daughter, and the couple had no more children. Oliver Winchester died in 1880, quickly followed in March 1881 by William, who died of tuberculosis, giving Sarah approximately 50 percent ownership in the Winchester company and an income of $1,000 a day.

Origin of the Winchester House

The grieving Sarah felt that her family was cursed, and sought out spiritualists to determine what she should do. A medium allegedly told her that the Winchester family was cursed by the spirits of all the people who had been killed by the Winchester rifle, and she should move west to build a house for herself and the spirits. The medium also is claimed to have told Sarah that should construction ever stop on the house, she would die. However, a more logical explanation for the move and the house has been suggested. Was a change of scenery and a never-ending hobby what Sarah needed to distract herself from her pain?

In 1884, Sarah moved to California and purchased an eight-room farmhouse under construction from Dr. Robert Caldwell. It stood on 162 acres (0.7 km²) of land in what is now San Jose. Immediately, she began spending her $20 million inheritance by renovating and adding more rooms to the house, with work continuing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the next 38 years. She was fascinated with the number 13 and worked the number into the house in many places. (There are thirteen bathrooms, windows have thirteen panes, and so forth.)

After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Sarah was trapped in her bedroom for a short time, no more than a few hours. However, when she got out, she told the construction crews to stop working on the almost-finished front part of the house and left most of the extensive earthquake damage unrepaired; she thought the spirits were angry with her because the front rooms were near completion. Work continued on new additions and remodeling the other parts of the structure.

Due to the lack of a master plan and constant construction, the house became very large (160 rooms) and quite complex; many of the serving staff needed a map to navigate the house. The house also features doors that open into walls, staircases that lead nowhere and windows that look into other walls. There are two theories as to why Mrs. Winchester built such an unusual house. The first is by far and away the most popular and that is, she built the house to confuse the ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles. The second, much less popular, is that while Mrs. Winchester was an exceedingly wealthy woman and could build her house any way she wanted; she had no architectural training at all, so some of the oddities could be simple design error. The Winchester Mystery House is now a National Historic Monument.

Sarah's death

Construction stopped on the Winchester Mystery House when Sarah died on September 5, 1922 at the age of 83. She was buried next to her husband and infant child in Evergreen Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut. The house was not included in her will and was sold at auction. Her furniture was willed to her niece, Marian Marriot, who took what she wanted and sold the rest of the furnishings.

Legacy

The Santa Clara - Los Gatos Boulevard in front of the house was later renamed Winchester Boulevard.

References

• New York Times; June 12, 1911, Monday; Winchester's Widow Dying. Work on Her House in San Jose, California, Has Never Ceased.
• New York Times; May 31, 1970, Sunday; San Jose, California. A stairway that leads nowhere, a window that opens to reveal only a wall, a doorway that leads to nothing. These are parts of a disjointed, 160 room Victorian mansion that Mrs. Sarah Winchester built on the northern outskirts of San Jose after the sudden loss of both her husband, the son of Oliver Fisher Winchester, the rifle magnate, and her daughter.

External links

• Official website of Winchester Mystery House
• Mrs. Winchester's Windows
• Sarah Winchester's grave