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Sarah Winchester (1837 - September 5, 1922), born Sarah Lockwood Pardee, was an heiress and the builder of the Winchester Mystery House.
In September, 1862, in New Haven, Connecticut, she married William Winchester, the only son of the owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, Oliver Winchester. The couple had one daughter, Annie, who died while an infant. Sarah fell into a deep depression following the death of her daughter, and the couple did not have any more children. Oliver died in 1880, quickly followed in March 1881 by William, who died of tuberculosis, giving Sarah aproximatly 50 percent ownership in the Winchester company and an income of $1,000 a day.
Sarah felt that her family was cursed, and sought out spirtualists to determine what she should do. A medium told Sarah that the Winchester family was cursed by the spirits of all the people who had been killed by the Winchester rifle, and that she should move west and build a house for herself and the spirits. The medium also told Sarah that should construction ever stop on the house that she would die.
In 1884 Sarah moved to California and purchased a six room farm house under construction, which belonged to a Dr. Caldwell, on 162 acres of land in what is now San Jose. She began immediately spending her $20 million inheritance on renovating the house, with work continuing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the next 38 years. Construction only stopped on the Winchester Mystery House upon her death in 1922, when the workers immediately stopped building, leaving nails hammered in part way.
Among her eccentricities are her facination with the number 13 and sleeping in a different room every night.
