Sarah Winchester

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Sarah Winchester (1865)
Sarah Winchester (circa 1920)

Sarah Lockwood Winchester (* 1839 in New Haven as Sarah Lockwood Pardee, † September 5, 1922 in San Jose ) was the widow and heiress of the American arms manufacturer William Wirt Winchester. Their legacy was 20 million US dollars and a share of 50% at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company , which made their day to one of the richest women in the world. She gained greater fame through Winchester House , which she bought in 1884 and had it constantly rebuilt and expanded until her death in 1922.

Life

She was born in the summer of 1839 to Leonard Pardee and his wife Sarah, b. Burns, born in New Haven. On September 30, 1862, she married William Wirt Winchester, the only son of Oliver Winchester, the founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. On June 15, 1866, their daughter Annie Pardee Winchester was born, who died just a month later, on July 22, 1866, due to a marasmus .

William Winchester died of tuberculosis in March 1881 at the age of 43 . Since his father had died a year earlier, Sarah Winchester inherited the entire $ 20 million fortune, which was worth $ 529,862,069 in 2019. In addition, she received about 50 percent of the shares in her husband's company, which corresponded to a daily income of UD 1,000 for the rest of her life.

In 1884 the widow bought an 8 room farmhouse and 161 acres of land from Dr. Robert Caldwell, which she had converted and expanded according to her ideas. The construction work was only finished with her death on September 5, 1922.

Llanada Villa known as the Winchester Mystery House

In 1909, Sarah Winchester set up a fund to help build a tuberculosis clinic under the roof of New Haven Hospital in her hometown. Construction of the hospital building began in 1916, but was rented by the US government for use as a military hospital prior to completion. After the war it was named William Wirt Winchester Hospital, but remained in state hands until it was given its originally intended function from 1928 and operated as a tuberculosis clinic until 1940. In 1948 the no longer used buildings were sold.

According to popular belief , Sarah Winchester was obsessed with the fear of being haunted and killed in their sleep by the ghosts of those killed with Winchester rifles. Therefore, she had her villa built like a huge labyrinth and slept in different rooms every day so that the ghosts wouldn't find her. As early as 1895, newspapers began to speculate about the behavior of Winchester and their motives for building the house. Many of these articles can be attributed to the tabloids . Reports of occult connections such as evil spirits and the alleged madness of the widow did not come up until after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake .

Sarah Winchester died in her sleep. Her funeral was held in Palo Alto , and she was buried in Alta Mesa Cemetery. Her bones were later transferred to New Haven along with those of her sister. They are buried in a family grave in Evergreen Cemetery.

Media reception

Web links

Commons : Sarah Winchester  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Wagner, Richard Allan: The Truth About Sarah Winchester, the Belle of New Haven . In: The Truth About Sarah Winchester . Retrieved August 10, 2017.
  2. ^ Sarah Winchester: Woman of Mystery . Winchester Mystery House, LLC. 2003. Archived from the original on August 26, 2013. Retrieved on August 16, 2013.
  3. ^ Winchester, Sarah Pardee, 1837-1922 . In: Library of Congress Name Authority File . Library of Congress . January 29, 1993. Retrieved August 16, 2013.
  4. ↑ a b grave site, listed on findagrave.com , accessed on March 27, 2020
  5. ↑ a b c New Haven's Hospitals , accessed March 27, 2020
  6. ↑ Mary Jo Ignoffo: Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune . 2nd Edition. University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 2012, ISBN 978-0-8262-7231-7 , pp. 138 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
personal data
SURNAME Winchester, Sarah
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Winchester, Sarah Lockwood; Pardee, Sarah (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American grand heiress
DATE OF BIRTH 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH New Haven (Connecticut)
DATE OF DEATH September 5, 1922
Place of death San Jose (California)