SARAH WINCHESTER - WOMAN OF MYSTERY

 By Caroline Clemmons

Sarah Pardee Lockwood Winchester, the fascinating woman who built Winchester House. Sara was born to Sarah and Leonard Pardee in 1839 in New Haven Connecticut. On September 30, 862, Sarah married William Wirt Winchester. William was the son of Oliver Winchester, owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Sarah was called Sallie.

She and William had one daughter, Annie, in 1866. Annie had marasmus and lived only a month. William and Sarah enjoyed traveling, and found the California coast a pleasant place. Sadly, William died of tuberculosis in 1881. She lost her mother and her father in law near the same time.  

Sarah Winchester 1865

Sarah was a woman of independence, drive, and courage.  She purchased a small, two-story farmhouse and ranch, called Llanada Villa. The property would later become known as Winchester House. She, like many wealthy women of the era, sought medums.

About three years after William’s death, Sarah developed rheumatoid arthrititis. Her doctor suggested a warmer and drier climate might improve her health. She had happy memories of traveling to San Francisco with husband in the 1870s. In 1886-1888 (depending on source), a San Francisco agent of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company took Sarah on a tour of the Santa Clara Valley to look for a home.

She bought a forty-five acre ranch near San Jose, which contained an eight-room, two-story farmhouse. At the time, she purchased many properties, including 140 acres, the majority of which is now downtown Los Altos. The property reminded her of Llanada Alavesa in the Basque area, so she named it Llanada Villa. She invited her three remaining sisters to move with her. She gave the farm house to her sister and brother in law. This is the house that became known as Winchester House.

Sarah also owned a houseboat, which was moored near Winchester House. Many people called it Sarah’s Ark and say she was afraid of a great flood. There is no documented evidence of this, as many people of her social set at owned houseboats at the time.This is the sort of myth circulating about this fascinating woman--but I'll address that in a future post.

In 1890, Saran’s niece, Daisy Merriman, came to live with her. Daisy became Sarah’s administrative assistant, looking after her business correspondence and banking. They were active in charities. In 1903, Sarah paid for Daisy’s wedding to Frederick Marriott III. That same year, Sarah purchased several homes and properties in Atherton. She offered one of the homes to Daisy and Frederick, which they accepted. She soon purchased a home for the couple that was nearer the train station. She continued speculating in real estate.

Sarah Winchester

Doesn't she look sad?

Sara Winchester died at Llanada Villa on September 5, 1922. The home she designed is world renowned for the many design curiosities and innovations as well as for the paranormal    

Sarah incorporated the 8-room farmhouse into the 500 room Winchester House. Eventually. Building was underway when the 1906 earthquake struck. The home was severely damaged. Work on the house was not continuous, but you might say it continued as she got to them.

Sarah died on September 5, 1922. She was buried at the Alta Mesa Cemetery. Her remains and those of her sister were later removed to place her beside the remains of her husband and infant daughter in Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut.

Which brings me to Winchester House, now known as Winchester Mystery House. I'll cover the house next month. When my husband and I toured Winchester House, we bought into the tour guide’s spiel. The information may or may not be true. First, the house is amazing! I don’t mean palatial, although it had been restored and was very nice for a Victorian/Edwardian home. At one time it contained 500 rooms and was seven stories. The home is in the National Trust and has hosted over twelve million tour visitors yearly. It has a reputation as one of the most haunted homes in America. Hero and I did not encounter any ghosts on our visit—at least, as far as we know.

Winchester House, San Jose, California

Winchester House

On September 30, 1862, Sarah Lockwood Pardee married William Wirt Winchester, the only son of Oliver Winchester, 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 from the childhood disease marasmus. 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 of 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. (This amount is roughly equivalent to $22,000 a day in 2008.)

According to the legends surrounding her, she felt that her family was cursed, and sought out spiritualists to determine what she should do. A 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 Sarah that if construction on the house ever stopped, she would die. In 1884, Sarah moved west to California and purchased an eight-room farmhouse under construction from Dr. Robert Caldwell. It stood on 161 acres of land in what is now San Jose, California. 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, thirteen chandeliers, and so forth.)


It estimated that 500 to 600 rooms were built, but because so many were redone, only 160 remain. This naturally resulted in some peculiar effects, such as stairs that lead to the ceiling, doors that go nowhere and that open onto walls, and chimneys that stop just short of the roof.


We may never know for sure if Mrs. Winchester built her house to accommodate the spirits, but over the years the story has come down that she believed her life was unavoidably affected by departed souls. Presumably she wanted to be friendly with the ‘good’ spirits and avoid the ‘bad’ spirits – and the way to be friendly with the ‘good’ spirits, it seemed, was to build them a nice place to visit.


According to this theory, Mrs. Winchester accommodated the friendly spirits by giving them special attention. For example, it is said that there were only three mirrors in the entire house at the time of Mrs. Winchester’s death. Legend has it that spirits hate mirrors, since the sight of their reflection causes them to vanish.
This is why Mrs. Winchester’s servants and secretary reportedly used only hand mirrors or went without.

The mansion also contained a profusion of light sources, from gas jets and countless candles, to electric light bulbs. Supposedly spirits feel conspicuous and humiliated by shadows, since they cannot cast their own.

The outside of the mansion received nearly as much care and attention as the inside. The cast external façade is bursting with Queen Anne Victorian architecture features like turrets, towers, curved walls, cupolas, cornices, and balconies, all outlined with finely detailed trim work.

When viewed from different angles, the towers, some topped by ornamental spires called finials, give the house a castle-like appearance. It’s an extravagant maze of Victorian craftsmanship – marvelous, baffling, and eerily eccentric, to say the least. Some of the architectural oddities may have practical explanations. For example, the switchback staircase, which has seven flights with forty-four steps, rises only about nine feet, since each step is just two inches high. Mrs. Winchester’s arthritis was quite severe in her later years, and the stairway may have been designed to accommodate her disability. The miles of twisting hallways are made even more intriguing by secret passageways in the walls. Mrs. Winchester traveled through her house in a roundabout fashion, supposedly to confuse any mischievous ghosts that might be following her. Because of the mansion’s immense size, it contained forty-seven fireplaces and seventeen chimneys. One rambling section in particular, the Hall of Fires, was designed to produce as much heat as possible.


My Aunt used to take us to visit this magnificent house every summer. One of my children refused to go inside because she could feel the intruders, the ghosts from the past. I never saw any ghosts, but found the story intriguing all my life.