Death
Construction stopped on the Winchester Mystery House when, on September 5, 1922, Sarah died in her sleep of heart failure at the age of 83. A service was held in Palo Alto, and her remains lay at Alta Mesa Cemetery until they were transferred, along with those of her sister, to New Haven, Connecticut. She was buried next to her husband and infant child in Evergreen Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut. Sarah Winchester left a will written in 13 sections, which she signed thirteen times. The belongings in Winchester Mystery House were left to her niece, Mrs. Marian I. Marriott, who took what she wanted and auctioned the rest off. It took movers eight truckloads a day for six and a half weeks to empty the entire house of furniture. They did not mention the former home of the furniture at the auction, which makes it impossible to track down today. The home was then auctioned to the highest bidder who then turned it into an attraction for the public; the first tourists walked through the house in February 1923, 5 months after Sarah died.
Read more about this topic: Sarah Winchester
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Tear out the close vermiculate crease
Where death crawled angrily at bay.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“But, when nothing subsists from a distant past, after the death of others, after the destruction of objects, only the senses of smell and taste, weaker but more enduring, more intangible, more persistent, more faithful, continue for a long time, like souls, to remember, to wait, to hope, on the ruins of all the rest, to bring without flinching, on their nearly impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)