Burns, around in New Haven, Connecticut. The couple was married in , had one daughter, Annie Pardee Winchester, who was born on June 15, but died after a few weeks, on July 25, from the childhood disease marasmus.
The couple had no more children. Winchester House According to the legends surrounding her, she felt that her family was cursed, and sought out spiritualists to determine what she should do. A Boston medium, Adam Coons, believed to be a psychic, allegedly told her 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 to build a house for herself and the spirits.
The medium is claimed to have told her that if construction on the house ever stopped, she would join her husband and infant daughter. However, Sarah's biographer found no evidence to support these claims and Sarah likely did not move west because a medium told her to do so.
In , Mrs Winchester moved west to California with her sister and her niece, and in , she purchased an eight-room farmhouse from John Hamm. It stood on acres 0. According to proprietors of the house, she was fascinated with the number 13 and worked the number into the house in many places. There are 13 bathrooms, many windows have 13 panes, chandeliers have 13 candles, and so forth.
Her biographer casts doubt on this story, however, and offers up an account from a carpenter who worked on the property for many years who claimed that architectural elements, such as chandeliers and windows, were altered after Winchester's death.
Contemporary scholars dispute the veracity of the claim that construction work continued, except for brief periods, after the earthquake. After the San Francisco earthquake, she was trapped in one of her bedrooms for several hours. However, when she got out, she told the construction crews to stop working on the nearly-completed front part of the house and had her carpenters board it up, leaving much of the extensive earthquake damage unrepaired.
Again, according to the legends, she thought the spirits were angry with her because she was spending too much time decorating and working on the front rooms. Construction resumed on new additions and remodeling the other parts of the structure.
Heart failure died in her sleep. Did Sarah finish grade school, get a GED, go to high school, get a college degree or masters? What schools or universities did Sarah attend? Was Sarah a religious woman?
Was Sarah baptized? Share what Sarah did for a living or if she had a career or profession. According to an obituary from the Modesto Herald on Sept 7 , she "for many years had aided financially the department of the Connecticut state hospital devoted to the treatment of tuberculosis patients as well as being interested in other charitable activities" Her husband died of TB. Did Sarah serve in the military or did a war or conflict interfere with her life? Sarah Winchester's obituary.
Sarah Winchester lived 11 years longer than the average Pardee family member when she died at the age of Life Expectancy. The average age of a Pardee family member is Looking for a different Sarah Winchester? View other bios of people named Sarah Winchester.
Everything you think you know about the Winchester Mystery House probably isn't true. From SFGATE Feb 7 The story is so famous most locals can recite it by heart: An eccentric widow, heir to an American rifle fortune, is tortured by the horrors wrought by the weapon. She becomes convinced only building a labyrinthine house will keep her safe and, if construction stops, the spirits will find and kill her.
The result of her delusion is the Winchester Mystery House, a monument to madness. The insanity of Sarah Winchester is, in short, a lie. The myth of Sarah Winchester begins in , over a decade after Winchester bought a modest farmhouse in San Jose. 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.
After the death of her husband, William Wirt Winchester, of tuberculosis in , Sarah decided to leave the East Coast to be with family. Her brother-in-law was the president of Mills College, and two of her sisters already lived in the Bay Area. 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.
Flush with cash and full of architectural ideas, Winchester set out to renovate her new property. From the start, she had a hard time squaring her ambitions with conventional architecture.
She parted ways with several architects before deciding to start drawing up plans herself. While most Bay Area millionaires were out in society, attending galas and loudly donating to charities, Winchester preferred a quiet life with the close family who occasionally lived with her.
In the absence of her own voice, locals began to gossip. By , the house was large enough to draw the speculating eyes of the community.
The Feb. The reason for it is in Mrs. Winchester's belief that when the house is entirely finished she will die. Instead, Mrs. Winchester is strictly concerned with the house as the source of her immortality. The story was so popular it was picked up by newspapers around the state. But the narrative is dubious at best. For one, the hammers did stop — and often.
In , America was hit with a years-long depression. Unemployment soared, hitting over percent in some states. In Sarah Winchester, the Bay Area found a perfect villain: a reclusive widow, wasting her money on a pointless mansion while people starved outside its gates. Her house, Dickey writes, was a "gaudy reminder of the haves versus the have-nots.
The majority of the article describes elaborate grounds and luxurious furnishings. A article about Winchester that ran in the Chronicle also notes not the supernatural, but the wastefulness of her endeavors. Some modern-day historians speculate one of the reasons Winchester kept building was because of the economic climate. By continuing construction, she was able to keep locals employed.
In her unusual way, it was an act of kindness. In , the San Francisco Call wrote a glowing article about another real estate project of hers: a medieval castle in San Mateo County. In the Bay Area, only her small circle of friends mourned her. This woman was Mrs. Later, Oliver channeled his efforts into a firearms manufacturing venture that eventually evolved into the famous Winchester Repeating Arms Company.
Thus, Young Sarah and William found themselves studying virtually the same curriculum under very similar circumstances. Moreover, like the Pardees, the Winchester family was not lacking in members who were Freemasons. Sarah and William were married on September 30, Their only child, Annie Pardee Winchester came into the world on July 12, One year later, William died of Tuberculosis at the age of The double loss of Annie and William was a staggering blow to Sarah.
According to Ralph Rambo, Sarah went on a three year world tour before settling in California in Winchester went during those years or what her activities consisted of. But we can project some well educated theories. Although Freemasonry has traditionally barred women from its membership, there are numerous documented cases in which some head-strong women have gained admittance into liberal, Masonic Lodges as far back as the 18th Century.
A movement in France called Co-Freemasonry, which allows for male and female membership was already underway when Sarah arrived in that country. Given her social status, a predilection towards Freemasonic tenets, and a mastery of the European languages, Sarah could easily have been admitted into any of the permissive French Masonic lodges.
Another possible scenario involving Mrs. Likewise, she would also have found inspiration in the Freemasonic symbology and the mysterious structure including a staircase that leads nowhere of Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. Robert Caldwell.
Her apparent motive for the move was to live in close proximity to her numerous Pardee relatives, most of whom had come to California during the Gold Rush, and were scattered from Sacramento to the Bay area.
One of these Pardee relatives, Enoch H. Pardee, had become a highly respected physician and politician while living in Oakland. Later his son George C. Also interesting, is the fact that President Theodore Roosevelt another member of the Bohemian Club came to California in to ask Governor Pardee to run as his Vice Presidential candidate in the national election.
The offer was turned down. During the same trip, Roosevelt attempted to visit Sarah Pardee Winchester. After purchasing Dr. Winchester hired a crew of approximately 20 carpenters, and began the implementation of a vast, building project that lasted until her death 38 years later.
With Mrs. The earthquake reduced the House to 4 stories. Thereafter, Sarah refrained from venturing any higher. Aside from its immense size and Victorian style architecture, the House has a number of unique characteristics. To begin, it is undeniably a labyrinth. There are literally miles of maze-like corridors and twisting hallways, some of which have dead ends—forcing the traveler to turn around and back-up.
There are also some centrally located passages and stairways that serve as shortcuts allowing a virtual leap from one side of the House to the other. The House abounds in oddities and anomalous features. There are rooms within rooms. There is a staircase that leads nowhere, abruptly halting at the ceiling.
In another place, there is a door which opens into a solid wall. There are tiny doors leading into large spaces, and large doors that lead into very small spaces. In another part of the House, a second story door opens outward to a sheer drop to the ground below. Moreover, upside-down pillars can be found all about the House.
Many visitors to the Winchester mansion have justifiably compared its strange design to the work of the late Dutch artist M. Door to nowhere. Stairs to nowhere. Skylight embedded in the floor. The Front of the Winchester Mansion. Adding further to the mysterious features, the prime numbers 7, 11, and 13 are repeatedly displayed in various ways throughout the House—the number 13 being most prominent.
These numbers consistently show up in the number of windows in many of the rooms, or the number of stairs in the staircases, or the number of rails in the railings, or the number of panels in the floors and walls, or the number of lights in a chandelier, etc.
Unquestionably, these three prime numbers were extremely important to Sarah and to Francis Bacon. Well ahead of her time, Mrs. Winchester employed many high tech inventions of her day. She is believed to have been the first builder to use of wool insulation. The House was lit with carbide gas lights that were supplied by its own gas manufacturing plant.
Panels of electric buttons were used to operate the lights by means of electro-mechanical strikers that caused a spark to ignite the various lamps. Sarah was also among the first to make use of a shower—and elevators, two driven by hydraulics, and a third by electricity. News of Mrs. In accordance with her twelve page 13 part will signed by her 13 times , Sarah had her entire estate divided up in generous portions to be distributed among a number of charities and those people who had faithfully spent years in her service.
Roy Lieb, Mrs. Although no mention has ever surfaced as to any specific guidelines or special instructions by which Mr. Lieb would select a buyer for the property, one gets the distinct impression that Sarah wanted the House to stand intact and perpetually preserved… and so it does. Winchester sought the advice of the then famous Boston medium Adam Coons. Coons further instructed Sarah that the angry spirits demanded that she move to California and build them a house.
To further appease the angry spirits, Mrs. For some inexplicable reason, however, Mrs. Furthermore, Sarah infused the numbers 7 and 11 into the architecture because they are lucky numbers. And the number 13? Winchester used to ward off the evil spooks. She also slept in a different room every night as an extra measure to throw the spirits off her trail.
Their source is usually television. Winchester in a positive light. These are good people who mean well—but this is hardly the legacy Sarah wanted to leave to posterity. It then becomes a matter of separating fact from fiction—beginning with the elimination process.
There is no record or evidence that Mrs. Winchester ever met the man. Nor is there any evidence to support the idea that she was a spiritualist or had any inclination to believe in communication with the deceased. Her closest companion and nurse of many years, Henrietta Severs, firmly denied that Mrs.
Winchester had any spiritualist leanings. Furthermore, why would odd features built into a house confuse evil spirits? And finally, if Mrs. Winchester truly believed she was cursed by the Winchester fortune, why would she exacerbate the matter by continuing to own vast shares of stock in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, then, later acquire still greater controlling shares that she maintained and profited from for the rest of her life?
Unquestionably, for many people, the folklore is entertaining—but it is a complete fabrication. Sarah made certain her legacy was well within reach and capable of being understood. Furthermore, she began crafting her puzzle long before the construction of the House.
As noted earlier, young Sarah Pardee was raised in an educational environment in which she had direct exposure to the influence of Masonic, Rosicrucian, and Baconian concepts. The ancient mystery schools emphasized the tradition of the initiate. The novice student, called the initiate or candidate, was required to undergo a series of tests in order to prove that he was ready and worthy to advance to successively higher levels of learning.
These levels are called Degrees. In ancient times, the initiate was subjected to a test called the labyrinth. The labyrinth was usually an underground or enclosed maze-like structure consisting of dark, winding stairs and passageways. The purpose of the test was to force the initiate to develop and hone his powers of intuition and insight.
The greatest test for the initiate lies in his ability to understand and identify Mrs. But most importantly, as we shall see, Sarah adopted the numeric, cryptographic techniques of Francis Bacon, incorporating them into her architecture along with specific Baconian symbols.
As we have seen, Bacon infused coded cipher messages in all of his works, including the Shakespearean plays and sonnets, and his translated work known as the King James Bible. Such tables matched the twenty four letters of the Elizabethan-Jacobean Alphabet with specific numbers. Later, when the English Alphabet expanded to twenty six letters, the Pythagorean 1 through 9 Table became the paradigm used by modern numerologists.
The Pythagorean 1 — 9 Table. Using the Pythagorean Table is a simple matter of matching the letters in a name or word with their corresponding numbers, then adding the numbers together until you have one, simplified number. So, her middle name, Lockwood adds up to 25, which then simplifies to 7. For personal and mathematical reasons, he elected to have that number represent his last name rather than the number 6. Likewise, the name Bacon, in accordance with the Kaye Cipher Table, adds up to the number As we have seen, this became the second code number he used to represent his last name.
In fact, the plot grows thicker when we note that the names Sarah Pardee and Francis Bacon both correspond in the Pythagorean Cipher with the number When Sarah first met William Wirt Winchester, she would have found his numbers to be nothing short of miraculous.
First, his name adds up in the Pythagorean Cipher to the number just like Bacon in the Kaye Cipher. As earlier noted, the number is extremely important to Kabbalists, Rosicrucians and Freemasons. Furthermore, the initials W. Many married couples like to say their union is the product of some kind of ineffable destiny. Notwithstanding their mutual love, their union was destined by numbers.
Sarah Pardee Winchester, age unknown. Courtesy of the History Museums of San Jose. William Wirt Winchester, age unknown. Moreover, the name Annie Pardee corresponds with the number 56 in the Pythagorean Cipher. In a different way, each of the names William 34 Winchester 52 and Annie 25 Winchester 52 when simplified, equate to the number However, the name Annie Winchester simplified or not still corresponds with the number 77 Pythagorean Cipher.
And just to insure we would understand that the connection between the number 52 and the name Winchester are not accidental Sarah deliberately placed coded inscriptions on the three tombstones of the Winchester family plot. These are not coincidences—and we know what these and other numbers meant to Sarah. As already noted, Sarah was weaving her tapestry of numbers long before she began the construction of her house.
Her connection with Francis Bacon is undeniable. As we shall further see, Sarah had every reason to identify with Bacon, philosophically, artistically and spiritually. The architect theme shows up in virtually everything he produced. It is his foundation for what would later become Speculative Freemasonry, and, as we have seen, it is ubiquitous throughout his Shakespearean work.
The architecture as art legacy was first passed down by the Roman architect and philosopher Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. It was Vitruvius who first expounded the virtue of the mathematical value of Phi the Divine Proportion, Golden Ratio, etc.
He held that architecture was the noblest and most perfect of all the art forms. This rational system of numbers is known as the Fibonacci sequence. As we have seen, he was the mastermind who single-handedly sired the English Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment that would follow. Growing to a petite 4'10" and 95 pounds, she also developed a reputation as one of the area's great young beauties, nicknamed the "Belle of New Haven.
On September 30, , Sarah married fellow New Haven resident William Winchester, whom she had likely known since childhood. Her father-in-law, Oliver, was co-owner of the Winchester-Davies Shirt Manufactory, and William was being groomed to take over the company. However, Oliver had also developed an interest in the firearms business, and after taking control of the Volcanic Arms Company, he established the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in William soon sold his interest in the shirt company and became secretary of Winchester Repeating Arms.
The family business became immensely successful; its Winchester Model rifle was known as the "gun that won the West," and the company sold more than , rifles from that year through In June , Winchester gave birth to a daughter, Annie.
However, the baby was unable to process calories and died malnourished six weeks later. Winchester had no more children. In March , William also died, following a long battle with tuberculosis. In Winchester bought a acre plot of land in San Jose, California, which included an eight-room cottage.
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