Sarah Lockwood Winchester (Pardee)

Sarah Winchester, formerly Sarah Lockwood Pardee, married William Wirt Winchester on 30 September 1862. Despite the fact that the Civil War was then going on in the USA, the wedding was a big social occasion in New Haven, Connecticut. The Winchesters were as close to royalty as could be found in that part of the world then. They owned the famous Winchester Repeating Arms Company and had raked in a huge fortune with their brilliant invention, the Winchester Rifle or the Henry Rifle. This was perhaps one of the best known firearms in the world – the gun that had enabled the White Man to bring the American West under his sway, wasting along the way, deservedly or undeservedly, the lives of countless human beings and other living creatures. I suppose it could be considered by one view-point a fortune ill-got. Certainly, after a time, Sarah began to entertain such thoughts herself.

At first everything went well. After the lavish wedding of the year, Sarah settled down happily with her husband and busied herself with becoming the social entity of her town. It wasn't at all difficult - she had a pretty face and great charm and a considerable fortune like that always usually corrects everyone else's manners. With the Civil War had come a greater demand for guns and the Winchesters had landed some new, lucrative governmental contracts which only enlarged their coffers further. It was a happy time. And to add to it, Sarah, in the July of 1866, gave birth to a daughter Annie. It seemed she had everything anyone could possibly want. And then tragedy struck.

Only a short while later, Annie became ill with Marasmus, a wasting disease that affects mainly very young children, and died on 24 July. It was such a devastating blow to Sarah, she became mentally unbalanced and reclusive. It took her a very long time to recover and she never had any other children. Fifteen years later her beloved husband William contracted tuberculosis, a deadly disease in those times, and died on 7 March 1881. His death left Sarah a very wealthy widow – with a $20 million inheritance and a half-share in the company that fetched $1000 daily. It was no consolation - she was alone and terribly unhappy.

Sarah began to think that there was a curse on her family, and this idea was reinforced when she soon took to visiting psychics. One of the psychics convinced her that she had lost her daughter and husband due to the posthumous ill-will of all those finished off by the Winchester Rifles. And she would be next in line for their evil attention – unless she lived in a house that was never, ever completed.

Sarah took the psychic's advise to heart and, in 1884, shifted base from New Haven to San Jose, California. There she purchased a six room farm house that stood in the middle of 161.919 acres of land, and moved into it. She began construction work on it almost immediately, and kept it up continuously for the next 38 years. Imagine that! The construction work went on for 24 hours every single day, without faltering for a minute, for 38 entire years!

Sarah never prepared blue-prints or anything like that. She drew the rooms that were to be added on table cloths, bits of paper, anything in fact that was convenient. She had no sense of designing and it probably wasn't her intention to create anything terribly aesthetic either - the main thing was to keep on building and so she did, adding rooms haphazardly where ever she felt like it. The house eventually became such a maze that both she and her servants needed maps to navigate around it!

Sarah became a stanch supporter of the doctrine of Francis Bacon, was a Theosophist, a Rosicrucian and a Freemason (yes, there were women Freemasons during Sarah‘s time). Her House is saturated with Rosicrucian and Masonic symbolism. Also, her overwhelming display of specific numbers show an unequivocal pattern - a code for the initiate to read and understand. Moreover, the strange symbols and mysterious references to Shakespeare in some of her stained glass windows reveal her thoughts and the amazing role she saw herself destined to play on the earthly stage.

It is said that she built over 600 rooms on seven floors and two basement levels. The San Francisco Earthquake of April 1906 reduced the floors to four and many of the rooms either collapsed during the earthquake or were pulled down for various reasons. At present there are 160 rooms - amongst these, 40 bedrooms, 6 kitchens, 2 ball-rooms, and 13 bathrooms. Some of the rooms are rooms within rooms. There are around 47 fire-places, some with no smoke outlets. There are 40 flights of stairs – quite a few of these leading to nowhere - and over 450 doorways. There are about 2000 doors and about 10,000 windows, many with beautiful glass doors. Some of the windows are placed in the floor or on blank walls, and some of the doors are actually dangerous - opening without warning into a sharp fall either into the garden or into the kitchen sink. No doubt these traps were for the spirits, but one wonders what would have happened if Sarah had lost her map and stepped out herself.

Sarah was obsessed with the number 13, and this is evident by many of the features around the house. Many of the glass doors have thirteen panels, many rooms have thirteen windows, the kitchen sinks have thirteen drain holes, the gas chandelier has thirteen lights, all the stairs (except one that has 42 steps) have thirteen steps.

After the Earthquake hit her house - and trapped her for a while inside - Sarah took this to be the spirits' way of telling her that she was spending way too much time and money of the front parts of the house. So she boarded these and never entered or exited by her front door thereafter.

Sarah Winchester was a recluse and never saw anybody - except her favorite psychics, I suppose. She never invited visitors to stay and she didn't like the servants coming across her too much either - she once dismissed a workman for seeing her face. She paid the servants and workers a daily wage of $3, which was a very good wage then - and if she didn't like anyone at the end of the day they were summarily dismissed. She reportedly slept in a different room every night - I suppose I would have too if I had that many, I mean, you know, what the heck! - but Sarah did it to confuse the spirits further.

On 22 September 1922, when she was 85, Sarah died peacefully in her sleep. The work on the perpetually unfinished house ceased there and then.

Sarah was buried alongside her child and husband. Her will – which she wrote and signed in 13 sections - left her servants some money, her niece some furniture (it required six and a half weeks to haul it away, eight truckloads of it every single day), and the Winchester Fund for the treatment of Tuberculosis received some $ 2 million in bequest . Aside from her will, her safe had contained only the locks of hairs of her husband and child and their obituaries.

The Winchester House is now a National Historic Site and is a major tourist attraction today. There are daily tours except Christmas Day and special night tours on Halloween and every Friday the Thirteenth. It is supposedly haunted - various people have claimed to have seen ghosts or heard strange piano music, and so on and so forth. So go visit. Who know, you might get lucky.

Sarah was William Philo Hibbard's 6th Cousin

Sarah L. Winchester (September 1839 – September 5, 1922), was the wife of William Wirt Winchester and heiress to his estate and a 50% holding in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company following his death from tuberculosis in 1881. Convinced spirits would kill her if she completed construction of her California home, Sarah used her fortune to continue uninterrupted, round-the-clock construction on it for 38 consecutive years. Since her death, the sprawling Winchester Mystery House has become a popular tourist attraction, known for its many staircases and corridors leading nowhere.

Links

Wiki - Sarah Winchester

Winchester Mystery House
American Folk Figure. An eccentric heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, she is remembered for the continuous construction of her home in San Jose, California in order to prevent the spirits of those who were killed by the Winchester rifle from killing her. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, her father was a carriage manufacturer. Known as the "Belle of New Haven," she enjoyed all the advantages of a cultured upbringing, including an education at the best private schools. She spoke four languages and played piano beautifully. In September 1862 she married William Wirt Winchester, the son of Oliver Winchester, owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. After the death of their infant daughter from malnutrition in July 1866, she became severely depressed and never recovered. When her father-in-law Oliver Winchester died in 1880, her husband took over the company, but he died of tuberculosis the following year, and she received approximately 50 percent ownership in the Winchester company and an income of $1,000 a day. A Boston medium, believed to be a psychic, 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 is claimed to have told her that if construction on the house ever stopped, she would join her husband and infant daughter. In 1884 she moved west to San Jose, California with her sister and her niece, and in 1886 she purchased an eight-room farmhouse, known today as the Winchester Mystery House. She immediately 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 36 years, although this is disputed by contemporary scholars. She was fascinated with the number 13 and worked the number into the house in many places. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, she became trapped in one of her bedrooms for several hours. When she was finally freed, she told the construction crews to stop working on the nearly completed front part of the house and had her carpenters board it up, leaving much of the extensive earthquake damage unrepaired. According to the legends, she thought the spirits were angry with her because she was spending too much time decorating and working on the front rooms and construction resumed on new additions and remodeling the other parts of the structure. After the earthquake, she moved to Atherton, California and visited the house in San Jose only periodically. She suffered from arthritis in her later years and died of heart failure in San Jose, California at the age of 83. At the time of her death, construction on her home ceased immediately. The unfinished house sprawled over 6 acres, contained 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and 6 kitchens. The Winchester Mystery House is a National Historic Landmark, a San Jose CA historic landmark, a California historic landmark, and a popular tourist attraction. Daily tour guides are given of the house and the surrounding estate. (bio by: [fg.cgi?page=mr&MRid=47016546" target="_blank William Bjornstad)] Maintained by: Find A Grave Record added: Apr 15, 1999

Find A Grave Memorial# 5125

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Mar 10 2018, 16:06:39 UTC