Winchester Repeating Arms Co. issued to Wells Fargo Bank and Union Trust Co., Trustee under the will of Sarah Lockwood Winchester as Deceased - Gun Stock Certificate

Stock dated the year of the "Crash". Issued to Wells Fargo Bank and Union Trust Company, Trustee under the will of Sarah Lockwood Winchester as Deceased. ONLY 1 AVAILABLE.

Sarah Lockwood Winchester (née Pardee; 1839 – September 5, 1922) was an American heiress who amassed great wealth after the death of her husband, William Wirt Winchester, and her mother in law, Jane Ellen Hope. Her inheritance included $20 million ($536.3 million in 2020) as well as a 50% holding in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, which made her one of the wealthiest women in the world at the time.

Sarah Winchester is best known for using her vast fortune to continue construction on the Winchester mansion in San Jose, California, for 38 years. Popular legends, which began during her lifetime, held that she was convinced she was cursed by the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifle, and the only way to protect herself was to continually add on to her California home. Since her death, the sprawling Winchester Mystery House has become a popular tourist attraction, known for its staircases that lead to nowhere, along with its many winding corridors and doors that lead to walls or sudden drops.

In the span of one year, 1881, she lost her mother, her father-in-law, and finally her husband William, who died of tuberculosis.

In 1886, she purchased a small, two-story farmhouse and ranch in San Jose, California. The property was called Llanada Villa, and would later become known as the Winchester Mystery House.

In 1888 Winchester purchased 140 acres of land, the majority of what is now downtown Los Altos, California, to use as a ranch. She also purchased a farmhouse, now known as the Winchester-Merriman House, for her sister and brother-in-law. The house is listed on the Historic Resources Inventory of the Los Altos Historical Commission.

In the 1920s Mrs Winchester also maintained a houseboat on San Francisco Bay at Burlingame, California, which became known as "Sarah's Ark", as it was reputedly kept there as insurance against her fear of a second great flood, such as the Biblical one experienced by Noah and his family, but a more mundane answer is that many people of her social standing in California at that time had houseboats or yachts. The "Ark" was located near the eucalyptus grove at Winchester Road, south of what was to become the intersection of Anza Boulevard and U.S. Highway 101. The ark was destroyed by fire in 1929.

She died at Llanada Villa on September 5, 1922, at 10:45pm of heart failure. A service was held in Palo Alto, California, 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 their infant child in Evergreen Cemetery. She left a will written in thirteen sections, which she signed thirteen times. The belongings in Winchester Mystery House were left to her niece, Marian I. Marriott, who auctioned off almost everything.

Following her death, the home was 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, five months after Winchester died.

• The Santa Clara-Los Gatos Boulevard in front of the house was later renamed Winchester Boulevard, after the house. Today, the house is open to the public every day except Christmas Day. Tours are conducted of both the house and the grounds on those days.
• The Haunting of Winchester is a musical about her by Craig Bohmler and Mary Bracken Phillips that takes place in the Winchester Mystery House. It was commissioned by the San Jose Repertory Theatre for its 25th anniversary season, and premiered in September–October 2005.
• In 2016, French director Bertrand Bonello's short film Sarah Winchester, opéra fantôme received an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi.
• She was portrayed by actress Helen Mirren in the 2018 horror film Winchester.
• The American poet Alexandra Teague's book, The Wise and Foolish Builders (Persea, 2015), reconsiders Sarah Winchester's legacy in the context of Westward expansion and gun violence.
• The podcast Criminal covered Sarah Winchester's endless building of the Winchester mansion on their episode "The Widow and the Winchester."

The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a leading American manufacturer of repeating firearms, headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut. Today, the Winchester brand is owned by the Olin Corporation, and its name is licensed to two subsidiaries of the Herstal Group: Fabrique Nationale (FN) of Belgium and the Browning Arms Company of Ogden, Utah.
The origins of Winchester Repeating Arms trace back to the Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson partnership based in Norwich, Connecticut, distinct from the later Smith & Wesson Revolver Company founded by the same individuals. Smith and Wesson acquired an improved version of Walter Hunt's 1848 "Volition Repeating Rifle" and its innovative "Rocket Ball" ammunition from inventor Lewis Jennings. Although Jennings' rifle was commercially unsuccessful and Robbins & Lawrence, the producer, ceased manufacturing in 1852, Smith developed a significantly enhanced rifle based on Jennings' design. The partnership also recruited Benjamin Tyler Henry, the former shop foreman at Robbins & Lawrence. In 1855, seeking to produce their "Volcanic" lever-action rifle and pistol, Smith and Wesson incorporated as the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company. Oliver Winchester, a clothing manufacturer, became its largest stockholder.

Read More

Read Less