Sarah Winchester
American heiress and occultist (1839–1922)
Sarah "Sallie" Lockwood Winchester (née Pardee; June 4, 1839 – September 5, 1922) 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 (née Burns) 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.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sarah Winchester” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.