![]() “For instance, my upper hall which leads to the sleeping apartment was rendered so unexpectedly dark by a little addition that after a number of people had missed their footing on the stairs I decided that safety demanded something to be done."įar from an exercise in spiritualism, Winchester’s labyrinth arose because she made mistakes - and had the disposable income to carry on making them. "I am constantly having to make an upheaval for some reason,” Winchester wrote to her sister-in-law in 1898. With no professional training, it didn’t always go smoothly. She parted ways with several architects before deciding to start drawing up plans herself. Winchester was about 25 when this was taken.įrom the start, she had a hard time squaring her ambitions with conventional architecture. Flush with cash and full of architectural ideas, Winchester set out to renovate her new property.Ī hand-tinted ambrotype of Sarah Winchester taken in 1865 by the Taber Photographic Company of San Francisco. Her share of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company amounted to a $20 million inheritance, 50-percent ownership in the company and an income of $1,000 per day (over $25,000 in today’s money). Upon the death of her husband, Sarah, a bright young woman from New Haven, Connecticut, instantly became one of the wealthiest women in the world. Some historians believe she initially bought the San Jose farmhouse with an eye for expansion - as the family’s wealthiest member, she could afford to build a place to house them all. Her brother-in-law was the president of Mills College, and two of her sisters already lived in the Bay Area. After the death of her husband, William Wirt Winchester, of tuberculosis in 1881, Sarah decided to leave the East Coast to be with family. Although legend would have you believe Winchester was on the run from an army of ghosts, the reason for her move was familial, not supernatural. The myth of Sarah Winchester begins in 1895, over a decade after Winchester bought a modest farmhouse in San Jose. The insanity of Sarah Winchester is, in short, a lie.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |