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:
“Death, the most dreaded of all evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.”
—Epicurus (c. 341–271 B.C.)
“Now they heap the funeral pyre,
And the torch of death they light;
Ah! ‘tis hard to die by fire!”
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)
“I mourn the safe and motherly old middle-class queen, who held the nation warm under the fold of her big, hideous Scotch-plaid shawl and whose duration had been so extraordinarily convenient and beneficent. I felt her death much more than I should have expected; she was a sustaining symbol—and the wild waters are upon us now.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)