The old homes of Capitol Hill have more than a few scary stories rattling around inside. Some appear legendarily spooky. So it is not surprising to sometimes hear tales of one of the spookiest of all American families having been part of the history found in the houses surrounding the Hill’s Volunteer Park. Some tell tales of the legendary Winchester family’s home on the edges of Volunteer Park.

Like most good ghost tales, the legend of the Winchester House of Capitol Hill is mostly a mixture of confusion, fear and a good story.

The tales of the Winchesters of Capitol Hill seems so plausible and puts together all kinds of possible theories — for instance, that a Winchester family related to the gun family lived at least part time in Seattle, that they had a “summer home”, and, by extension, that these were relatives of the very famous Winchester House in San Jose, California built between 1884 – 1922 by Sarah Winchester, daughter-in-law and heir to half the fortune of Oliver Fisher Winchester who made a fortune from developing the Winchester repeating rifle.

Mrs. Winchester died in September of 1922, leaving bequests to her sister, nieces and nephews.

So were there Winchesters in Seattle who had a house across from Volunteer Park?

There is no evidence of any family with the name. The Capitol Hill plat, filed by James A. Moore in 1901 was located on a homestead that had remained empty and in private hands for 50 years. So development of any kind had not occurred east of 15th Avenue N (now 15th Ave. E) long the park edge until after 1901.

The Broadway access to Volunteer Park was somehow made possible to bury Doc Maynard in March of 1873 – his was the first grave in the new Masonic cemetery where Volunteer Park now exists – but they transported his body in a horse-drawn wagon.  It was a long time later that the mansions along the park to the west, and along Prospect Avenue to the south of the park were built.

Checking the Seattle Street Directories in the Seattle Public Library is also a bust.  Somewhere around 1920, the Winchester Apartments were built at 605 E. Denny Way.  There were families and Individuals with the last name Winchester (not very many, as it happens) who lived in Seattle for a while, but none of them lived on Capitol Hill.  The Baist map, plate 11 of 1912, which Paul Dorpat had given web space to, bless him, indicates that by 1912 the 15th Avenue side of the park was built out in rather similarly shaped, wood frame houses, most of them sizeable.

The mansions along 14th Avenue N — we call it Millionaires Row — were mostly wood frame also, and many of them were there.  Nothing that remotely looks like a “summer residence” is shown.  In 1935, for the first time, there is a listing for the Winchester Repeating Arms Co..  George H. Hambright was district sales manager, but operated out of his home on 32 Avenue S.  By 1940, the company had a downtown address and it continued to be listed as a company through 1960 (bought out by Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation in the 1950s).

Nope.  No Winchester family on Capitol Hill.

However, on  Sunday, January 27, 2002, ABC-television aired a new Stephen King screenplay introducing a haunted house called Rose Red – a fictional turn-of-the-century Seattle mansion.

Rose Red was inspired by the Winchester Mansion in San Jose. The house used for the set of this show is called Thornewood Castle in Lakewood (Tacoma), and appears to have a history of its own which may indicate that it is haunted. The fictional history seems to have seeped into the real world, convincing some that that Rose Red existed.

Meanwhile, the story of another wealthy gun manufacturing family does intertwine here. There may not have been Winchesters, but there were Remingtons in the area. Watson C. Squire, a former governor of the Washington Territory married Ida Remington, daughter of Philo Remington, president of the arms manufacturer. The Squire Park neighborhood is named after Gov. Squire and Remington Court, one block south of Jefferson between 12th and 14th, is named for the Remingtons. In West Seattle, there is an Ida Street.

And, it turns, Rose Red does have a neighborhood connection. Portions were filmed on Capitol Hill on 21st Ave E.

But any Winchester House of Capitol Hill is nothing more than a Seattle ghost story woven out of the atmosphere surrounding Volunteer Park, Stephen King’s fiction, and maybe a little wishful thinking.

CHS first published this story from historian Dotty DeCoster in 2011.