In keeping with todays theme of lots of household items, I recently needed to buy a meat grinder and decided to look for a cool old one. I picked this one because I used to guide tours at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose CA when I was in my late teens.
Here's the Winchester history in a nutshell -
The Winchester rifle was known as the gun that won the west, a huge improvement over the single-shot rifles (someone with more firearms knowledge might want to fill in here.) The Winchester company diversified into other metal and wood products, such as rollerskates and meat grinders.
The son of the inventor was named William Wirt Winchester. He married Sarah Pardee and the two of them had one child. Very suddenly, both W.W. Winchester and the child died, leaving Sarah Pardee Winchester a lonely widow battling depression. Her physician recommended that she go back east and visit her family. She did so, and on that visit she visited a spiritual medium. This medium told her that her husband and child had been killed by the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifle and that Sarah would be next to die, unless she appeased the spirits. To do that, she had to build a house for the spirits to live in and she had to build on it 24 hours a day, 365 day a year, never stopping.
Poor Sarah believed the medium, and came to San Jose CA where she purchased a small farm house and began to build, and build and build! She actually became a pretty good amature architect by the time of her death in the 1920's. She also invented several household devices. She designed a sink with a washboard molded into the side of it. She designed window latches that were modeled after the cocking mechanism on the Winchester repeating rifle. These can still be seen on the 4th floor of her house. She designed the little brass triangular plates that were used in the corners in old Victorian houses to make it easy to sweep out the corners. She also designed one thing that is still in use today- drawers on rollers. This came about because when Sarah bought fabric for a dress, she would buy the entire bolt so that no one could have a dress that looked like hers. She had to store these bolts of fabric in drawers and because of their weight, she put them on rollers. So when you open your desk drawer Monday morning- you can thank Sarah Winchester!
Sarah was fabulously wealthy, receiving enormous sums of money in royalties from the Winchester rifle and related products. This funded the building and rebuilding of the house, which was designed to encourage the presence of good spirits and frighten away evil ones. There are numerous uses of the number 13, which she believed was lucky for good spirits and only unlucky for evil ones. There are columns installed upside down, doors and staircases that lead to nowhere and many other unusual architectural features. The house is beautiful, filled with Tiffany glass windows and beautiful parquette flooring.
And then there's the ghosts... The house is one that has been believed to be haunted for decades, hence the name Winchester Mystery House.
So back to the meat grinder- I paid $27 for it. The prices are all over the board for these. One sold for $35 a few weeks ago, and I've seen them range from $45 on Ebay to a whopping $250, when most meat grinders go for about $7 to $10. So I feel OK about spending $27 bucks for this one.
My Winchester meat grinder:
Up close on the Winchester logo and the W12 model number.
The handle with the full name, Winchester Repeating Arms Co, New Haven Conn.
The inside of the handle, marked Made in USA
View looking down the top
Finally, my question is, when was the model W12 produced?
