Migrating to California in 1884, she bought an eight-room farmhouse on what were then the outskirts of San Jose.
Sarah took the medium’s counsel literally, and to epic extremes. He also told Sarah that she must never stop building and expanding the house. He told her that her loved ones’ lives had been taken by the restless spirits of the many men killed by the Winchester repeating rifle, “The Gun That Won The West.” The spirits would turn on her as well, he said, unless she moved west and built a home big enough to house all of them.
Half-crazed with grief, Sarah sought comfort and advice from a spiritualist. Wealthy, attractive, and talented, Sarah was one of the bright lights of New Haven society, until both her husband and her only child went to early graves. Wife of Connecticut firearms magnate William Wirt Winchester.
