Sarah Winchester
Sarah "Sallie" Lockwood Winchester was an American heiress, businesswoman, and philanthropist, who amassed great wealth after the death of her husband, William Wirt Winchester, and her mother in law, Jane Ellen Hope.
Winchester has become known for the construction of Llanada Villa, a mansion home in San Jose, California. Despite popular rumor claiming the house was built to trap spirits and ghosts that she thought were following her, there is no evidence for these rumors. Six months after her death, the home was turned into a tourist attraction now known as the Winchester Mystery House. Testimonies and records from those who knew her describe her as intelligent, kind, a savvy financial manager, and not superstitious, remaining sharp-witted even into old age. However, in the years since her death, she has been depicted in popular culture as guilt-ridden, mad with grief, and delirious in her later life.
Early life
Sarah Lockwood Pardee was the fifth child and fourth daughter born to parents Leonard and Sarah Pardee in the summer of 1839 at 29 Orange Street in New Haven, Connecticut. Though she was formally called Sarah, she was named after her paternal grandmother, Sally Pardee Goodyear, and was called Sallie all her life, signing all her correspondence using this name. She 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. The name Lockwood was after Pardee's father's longtime friend Lockwood Sanford who was a well-known New England wood engraver.Winchester's father was a skilled craftsman who had established a mill and wood shop called Leonard Pardee & Company.
Growing up, Pardee was educated, had a private French tutor, and took music lessons. Her 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. As an adult Sallie supported her sister Belle Merriman's animal rights activism, and is known to have chastised a boy who sought permission to hunt robins on her property.
Pardee lived with her family on Brown Street from 1853, when she was 14, until 1862 when she was married.
According to Mary Jo Ignoffo in her book Captive of the Labyrinth, Winchester was an independent thinker who was not as social as her siblings as a teenager.
Marriage and family deaths
During the American Civil War, Pardee, who was under five feet tall and then twenty-three, married William Wirt Winchester, then twenty-five, on Tuesday, September 30, 1862. William was the son of a wealthy shirt manufacturer who would later become known for being the founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The two had been childhood friends and neighbors.Because of building material shortages due to the Civil War, the two lived with William's parents on Court Street, New Haven. They hoped to build their own home on Prospect Hill. After the war, in 1866, the new home began construction.
On June 15, 1866, Sallie gave birth to a baby girl they named Annie Pardee Winchester, in honor of William's late sister, who had died during childbirth. The child suffered from marasmus and died within a month of her birth. The couple was devastated and withdrew from society, with Sallie remaining secluded for nearly a year.
During the construction of their home on Prospect Hill, the Winchesters embraced learning about architecture and design. Architecture and design became life-long hobbies for Sallie, who also learned about real estate investment and financial strategies from William and her father-in-law.
The house was completed in 1868, was approximately 20,000 square feet, had over twenty rooms with marble floors, decorative fireplaces and chandeliers, large bay windows, plasterwork ceilings, and a circular drive in front.
In June 1869, Sallie’s father died, at the age of sixty, possibly from rheumatoid arthritis.
Between 1880 and 1881, Sallie lost three close family members. Her 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.
After the loss of so many family members, Sallie spent time at the seashore, followed by a trip to Europe.
Inheritance
Shortly before his death, William made out bank drafts to his wife, totalling $7,500 and made her the executrix of his will. Sallie was forty years old when her husband died. She henceforth controlled 777 Winchester Repeating Arms Company shares which were valued at $77,700 at the time. Between 1880 and 1885, she earned dividends from the stock, which averaged $7,900 annually. With the death of her mother-in-law, Jane Winchester, in 1898, Sallie inherited a further 2,000 shares of Winchester Repeating Arms Company stock that was then worth about $400 per share.California
After the loss of so many family members and after a physician recommended the dryer and warmer climate for her worsening rheumatoid arthritis, Winchester decided to move to California, which was touted, at the time, as a place with a good climate, soil, and relatively cheap land for sale. She had previously been to San Francisco with her husband and had enjoyed her visit.In 1884, Mary Converse, her eldest sister, died of cancer, convincing Winchester's sisters that they too should move to California. Winchester paid for her sister Isabelle "Belle" Merriman and Estelle Gerard and their children's move. Another sister, Nettie Sprague also moved to California as her husband, Homer Sprague, became president of a college for young women in the San Francisco area. Winchester supported her relatives financially for the rest of their lives.
Along with her sisters, her reins-man who drove her carriages, Frank Carroll accompanied Winchester to California. Once in California, Winchester found Euthanasia Meade who became her personal physician, until Meade died in 1895.
Edward "Ned" Rambo, the San Francisco agent for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, showed Winchester properties in the Santa Clara Valley.
Llanada Villa
The house that would eventually be named the Winchester Mystery House was purchased for $12,570 from John Hamm by Winchester in 1886 and was situated on a forty-five acre ranch in the Santa Clara Valley. She 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, Winchester was one of the first to grow fruit in the area. The first person Winchester hired was Rambo to become foreman of the farm, though he did also continue his duties at the Winchester office in San Francisco. In addition, she supplied housing on the property for Carroll's family. She hired local people to staff the house and farm, many of whom were from Europe, China and, later, Japan.The house was located on a country lane named Santa Clara-Los Gatos Road. After Winchester died the road was renamed first Winchester Road then Winchester Boulevard. Her initial plan was to build a house to accommodate her whole family. This never happened partly due to the isolated location and partly due to the constant construction. The only family member to live with her was her niece Maria "Daisy" Merriman who moved in when she was twenty-one in 1890.
Within the first six months, Ignoffo estimates that the house had increased in size to twenty-six rooms. She attended Expositions that inspired her interior and exterior design. As was typical of the time, the design included much ornamentation, including a statue of Hebe, which still stands at the home, intricately laid, patterned wood floors of a variety of hardwoods including teak and mahogany, embossed wall coverings that looked like leather or metal, ceilings decorated with stencils and moldings, German chandeliers, Austrian art glass, Asian furnishings and French paintings.
The gardens were filled with ornamental trees, shrubs and flowers. It is estimated that Winchester had plants from over 110 countries in the villa gardens.
Winchester hired at least two architects, but they would not have been to the calibre she was used to from New Haven. Ignoffo speculates that this could be why she chose to run the construction project herself, seeking the advice of carpenters she hired. Her interest in architecture was evident by her subscription to journals including Architectural Record. She did all the drawings and design but did not have an overall plan. She worked room by room. If she was unhappy with the results, she would tear the section down to rebuild, or abandon it for a while before returning to work on it again. The result was a rambling maze.
The windows, which are pastel-colored, asymmetrically designed and sharply bevelled, were initially believed to be made by Tiffany & Co. Historian Jim Wolf believed that the windows were most likely made by glass artist John Mallon from Alexander Dunsmuir's company, the Pacific American Decorative Company, since this style of glass could also be found at Craigdarroch Castle in British Columbia, Canada. Wolf's theory was confirmed when an envelope with the Dunsmuir company seal on it, postmarked July 1894, was found within the walls of a dining room that was undergoing restoration. A note with Winchester's handwriting was on the envelope.
The upper-level windows have a spider-web tracery, a popular design of the time. Windows on the right and left side of a brick fireplace have Shakespearean quotes from Richard II and Troilus and Cressida. Many of the windows purchased were never installed and are stored in the house.
After 1896, Winchester added stories to the then two story home. In some areas the home was five stories high and she added a seven-story tower that the San Jose News said was rebuilt sixteen times before Winchester was satisfied. She added state of the art plumbing and electrical systems for the time. She 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. She installed an annunciator, a common, early version of intercom, to call servants.
Construction of the home was often delayed or stopped for months at a time.
The unusual design was not uncommon at the time. Elizabeth Colt, in Hartford, constructed a home over many years that was described as rambling and asymmetrical. Homes being constructed in the San Francisco area, such as Haas-Lilienthal, were described as "crazy quilts" being patched together.
She focused on her construction project instead of giving in to local rumors and insults. She kept tradespeople working during the many years the house was constructed. The house is Victorian, with Eastlake and Stick design elements. The original color was blue, but was later changed to yellow.
Winchester, over time, increased the size of her property around Llanada Villa from the original 45 acres to 160 acres.
In 1893, Winchester's youngest sister, Estelle Pardee Gerard, became ill. She was moved from San Francisco to Llanada Villa with the hope that the dryer climate would improve her health. It did not, and in January 1894, Gerard died from cirrhosis despite being treated by Winchester's personal physician, Meade.