Since the property reminded her of Llanada Alavesa from the Basque area, she named her new home Llanada Villa. She purchased the property from John Hamm which included a two-story, eight-room farmhouse.

He showed her a forty-five-acre ranch for sale that was located near San Jose. In 1886, Edward 'Ned' Rambo, a San Francisco agent for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, took Winchester on a tour of the Santa Clara valley to look for a home. Winchester invited her three remaining sisters to follow her to California, which they did. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune, her doctor's recommendation, her happy memories of traveling to San Francisco with her husband in the 1870s, and advertising about the weather and health benefits of California were possible factors in Winchester's decision to move. According to Mary Jo Ignoffo in her book Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. In 1885, at the age of 46, Winchester moved to California from New Haven, Connecticut. Around this time, she began developing rheumatoid arthritis and her doctor suggested that a warmer and drier climate might help improve her health. In 1884, her eldest sister, Mary Converse died. She was left with a large inheritance from her husband. īetween the fall of 1880 and the spring of 1881, Winchester's mother, father-in-law, and husband died. Diagnosed with marasmus, she did not thrive and only lived a month. In 1866, Winchester gave birth to a girl named Annie Pardee Winchester. She married William Wirt Winchester in 1862. Sarah Winchester, always called Sallie, after her paternal grandmother, was born in 1839 in New Haven, Connecticut.

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