62 Facts About Sarah Winchester

Sarah "Sallie" Lockwood Winchester was an American heiress who amassed great wealth after the death of her husband, William Wirt Winchester, and her mother in law, Jane Ellen Hope.

Sarah Winchester Lockwood Pardee was the fifth child and fourth daughter born to parents Leonard and Sarah Winchester Pardee in the summer of 1839 at 29 Orange Street in New Haven, Connecticut.

Sarah Winchester had four sisters and one brother who survived to adulthood.

One sister, her namesake Sarah E Pardee, and Leonard and Sarah's firstborn died from cholera when she was a year old.

Sarah Winchester's family had progressive ideas for the time regarding religion and philanthropic choices, publicly expressing their opinions on such things as abolition, suffrage and animal rights.

William was the son of a wealthy shirt manufacturer who would later become known for being the founder of the Sarah Winchester Repeating Arms Company.

Sarah Winchester's mother died in May 1880, her father-in-law, Oliver Winchester, died in December that same year, and her husband died from tuberculosis in March 1881.

Sarah Winchester henceforth controlled 777 Winchester Repeating Arms Company shares which were valued at $77,700 at the time.

Sarah Winchester had previously been to San Francisco with her husband and had enjoyed her visit.

Sarah Winchester paid for her sister Isabelle "Belle" Merriman and Estelle Gerard and their children's move.

Sarah Winchester supported her relatives financially for the rest of their lives.

Once in California, Sarah Winchester found Euthanasia Meade who became her personal physician, until Meade died in 1895.

Edward "Ned" Rambo, the San Francisco agent for the Sarah Winchester Repeating Arms Company, showed Sarah Winchester properties in the Santa Clara Valley.

Sarah Winchester named the eight room farmhouse and property Llanada Villa, since the area reminded her of the Llanada Alavasa in Spain, a place that she and her husband had visited ten years earlier.

At this property, Sarah Winchester was one of the first to grow fruit in the area.

The first person Sarah Winchester hired was Rambo to become foreman of the farm, though he did continue his duties at the Sarah Winchester office in San Francisco.

Sarah Winchester hired local people to staff the house and farm, many of whom were from Europe, China and, later, Japan.

Sarah Winchester attended Expositions that inspired her interior and exterior design.

Sarah Winchester hired at least two architects, but they would not have been to the calibre she was used to from New Haven.

Sarah Winchester did all the drawings and design but did not have an overall plan.

Sarah Winchester added state of the art plumbing and electrical systems for the time.

Sarah Winchester built an indoor garden with an irrigation system that watered the plants and sloping floors would channel the water to trap doors, which would then be piped to outdoor flower boxes.

Sarah Winchester installed an annunciator, a common, early version of intercom, to call servants.

Sarah Winchester focused on her construction project instead of giving in to local rumors and insults.

Sarah Winchester kept tradespeople working during the many years the house was constructed.

Sarah Winchester was moved from San Francisco to Llanada Villa with the hope that the dryer climate would improve her health.

Just prior to the earthquake, based on letters to her lawyer Leib, Sarah Winchester was at her home in Atherton.

Sarah Winchester had the debris cleared and the home made safe but no further building occurred.

Sarah Winchester paid $10,000 gold coin for a home for the Merrimans.

Sarah Winchester purchased 140 acres of land next to the Merriman home with the intention of raising and marketing large carriage horses.

Sarah Winchester hired Samuel Franklin "Frank" Leib to complete the purchase and sort out the title of the property.

In 1903 Sarah Winchester purchased several properties in Atherton, one of which was purchased for the Marriotts to live in.

In 1904 Sarah Winchester purchased land in the San Francisco Bay area near Burlingame.

Sarah Winchester owned multiple rental properties in Palo Alto, believing that property values near Stanford university would increase in value, two homes in Atherton, each on four acres, and thirty undeveloped acres of land.

In 1907, Sarah Winchester purchased a home at 44 Inglewood Lane that became her full time home.

In 1901 President William McKinley visited the Santa Clara Valley and Sarah Winchester did not invite him to visit her despite the president knowing who her husband, Will, was and having recommended him to be added to a memorial list of Historic Families of America in Washington DC.

Sarah Winchester mostly avoided politics but on one occasion she became vocal.

Sarah Winchester sent him a letter that was published in a local newspaper expressing her anger, and rebuking him for lying.

Sarah Winchester accused him of only focusing on her in his campaign because she was a woman unable to vote.

In 1889 William Converse, the then president of the Sarah Winchester Repeating Arms Company and Sarah Winchester's financial advisor, died.

Sarah Winchester decided to look after her own finances from that point on and hired Leib as her lawyer.

Sarah Winchester added William's portion of company stock when her mother in law died the same year.

Sarah Winchester was successful with her real estate purchases, real estate investments and financial strategies that she sustained or improved her wealth.

Sarah Winchester envisioned coastal estates with personal docks and passages that visitors visiting California would enjoy after going through the soon to be completed Panama Canal.

Sarah Winchester designed and oversaw the construction of a system of canals with locks and installed a moon bridge near her houseboat.

One of the contractors Sarah Winchester hired rented some of her property to use as farmland.

Sarah Winchester stole sand and gravel from her property, leaving the property with large ditches.

Sarah Winchester was so successful with her finances that between 1910 and 1912, she received $260,000 each year in stock dividends.

However, in 1919, the Sarah Winchester Company was having financial difficulties and the value of her stocks decreased from ten million to about 3.75 million dollars.

Sarah Winchester supported social causes, such as being on the finance committee supporting a celebration of California's fiftieth birthday in 1900, and being a paying member of a local chapter of the Red Cross.

Sarah Winchester supported the "Save the Redwoods" campaign by donating $500.

Over a ten-year period, Sarah Winchester donated over a million dollars to the hospital, which opened on April 4,1918, as the William Wirt Sarah Winchester Hospital.

Sarah Winchester was not well enough to attend the dedication ceremony.

September 1922, Sarah Winchester was driven from her home in Atherton to Llanada Villa to be closer to her doctor, who lived in San Jose.

Sarah Winchester was buried in New Haven at Evergreen Cemetery beside her husband, William and her daughter, Annie.

Sarah Winchester's estate was estimated to be worth between three and four million dollars, considerably less than what her estate was rumored to be worth.

Sarah Winchester named five of her closest employees in her will, along with all of her living family members.

In 1908, the first mention of angry spirits haunting Sarah Winchester appeared in the San Francisco Examiner with rumors she was considering selling Llanada Villa.

Incorrect rumors spread about Sarah Winchester's houseboat, stating that she purchased the boat after the earthquake for fear of a biblical flood.

Mrs Sarah Winchester was a sane and clear headed woman as I have ever known, and she had a better grasp of business and financial affairs than most men.

Sarah Winchester is depicted as superstitious and crazy instead of innovative and intelligent.

Sarah Winchester had an apparent love of the number thirteen, demonstrated by thirteen chandeliers, bathrooms, thirteen hooks and thirteen robes, which were all added after Winchester's death according to carpenter James Perkins.