Will the Real Marion Merriman Please Stand Up?

Working at the world-famous Winchester Mystery House, I talk day in and day out about the lady of the house, Sarah Winchester. I love Mrs. Winchester. This blog has made it perfectly clear that I adore the old woman as if she were a member of my own family, and I know I'm not the only Winchester tour guide that feels that way.

But there was another lady of the house. According to our records, the daughter of Mrs. Winchester's younger sister Isabel came to live with her Aunt Sarah (or, as she probably called her, "Aunt Sallie") in 1890, and moved out sometime between 1903 and 1905 when she got married. (Though she and her husband may have stayed with Mrs. Winchester at later dates as well.) Her niece's full name was Marion Isabel Merriman (until she got married to a Mr. Marriott), but she often went by the nickname "Daisy".

And she fascinates me. I sense a "kindred spirit" in her, to borrow a phrase from a childhood favourite novel, Anne of Green Gables. She seems to have been a free spirit with a big heart. I like that, I like to think we would have been friends. I like to think she's the type of friend who would drive to your house at 1 AM for a spontaneous trip to IHOP.

I mean you don't pose in fountains for photos if you're not a free spirit.

But she is just as mysterious as her aunt. We don't know a lot about her. So I decided to try to gather, in one post, everything I know about Marion Isabel "Daisy" Merriman Marriott. As it seems to have been the nickname she preferred, I will be referring to her by the nickname "Daisy" for most of this entry.

According to ancestry.com, she was born on 16 March 1868, 2 years after Sarah Winchester's ill-fated daughter Annie who died as an infant. (For those who are curious, that means Daisy was a Pisces, with a Capricorn Moon. Hey, I did say this was going to be everything I knew about her.) I wonder if that's why Mrs. Winchester was so close to her niece. I wonder if she saw some vestiges of what could have been with Annie within Daisy.

As reclusive as Sarah Winchester was, her younger sister Isabel - Daisy's mother - was politically active, and Daisy, being raised like this, eventually grew to be as well. Both mother and daughter "rallied for kindness to animals and against child abuse," to quote Mary Jo Ignoffo's Sarah Winchester biography, Captive of the Labyrinth. (As you'll read a little later in this post, Daisy eventually put her money where her mouth was on this one. Also, apparently she was a registered Democrat, even before women could vote, so Daisy and I have that in common.)

Despite this, Sarah and Isabel were close. Sarah doted on Daisy from day one, and Isabel named her son - Daisy's little brother - William Winchester Merriman, after Sarah's husband. When Sarah moved to California after William senior's death, Isabel, Daisy, William junior, and Isabel's husband Louis followed. Marion was a teenager.

Did she have a wild teenage streak? If she did, it was lost to time. I like to imagine her admiring the ideal of the 'Gibson Girl'/'New Woman' image from afar, the idea that women could be active and work hard and still be feminine. I like to imagine both she and her mother were women's suffragists.

I don't know how much of an opportunity she would have had to entertain any wild streak within her. She came to live with her aunt to work as her secretary and personal companion for a number of years. The mansion was pretty much in the middle of nowhere back then - San Jose was farmland and orchards, not the bustling metropolis and suburban sprawl that it is now. I don't know how much free time she had to enjoy her youth in this new state, or where she could have gone to do it.

She was the only other person in the large sprawling mansion that wasn't a servant. That's gotta be a lot of responsibility for a young woman. Still, the love her aunt had for her is pretty evident even today - some think the daisy motif that pops up all over the house may be in honour of Daisy. And Daisy, for her part, loved her aunt just as much. She never seems to have resented her for any of that responsibility. On the contrary, she remained close to her until Sarah's death.

Still, she seems to have had some sort of social life. Ignoffo mentions that "young men in Daisy's circle of friends were dispatched out of San Francisco to the Philippine Islands" during the Great War, so I assume she knew how to make friends even if the odds were stacked against her as a new girl to California.

I'd be her friend. Look at that enigmatic smile. She knows something I don't.

There's also a theory that the reason she wanted to live with her aunt instead of her parents was not only to be closer to a town (downtown San Jose), but to escape her father. They don't seem to have been close. After she left home, there's no evidence of correspondence between Daisy and Louis Merriman. I don't know what that meant regarding their relationship, but Daisy didn't exactly have the best luck with men in her life either.

By the time she turned 30, she was still unmarried, but she wanted to change that. With her naturally youthful looks, she claimed she was only 25. (Not her most shining moment, but I can kinda relate to the insecurity, having just turned 26 myself and almost dreading 30 in this youth-obsessed culture.) Rumours began to fly as she socialised with young men in San Francisco. Local newspapers reported that Jesse Adel had proposed to her.

The problem was... Jesse was already engaged, to a tall blonde named Katherine Cain, by all accounts Daisy's opposite. No one seems to know the origin of the rumour, but Katherine was pissed. The next time she saw Daisy at Jesse's house, she threw a book at her head. I'm not making that up - she threw a book at her head! Daisy peaced the fuck out of there and two years later married a man named Frederick Marriott. (No relation to the hotel chain.) They got married at the Palace Hotel. Aunt Sarah paid. Daisy's parents did not attend, though she did visit her mother shortly after the wedding.

Frederick and Daisy adopted a daughter named Margaret. I have no idea if Daisy couldn't have children or if she just chose not to. Margaret had come from an abusive family, and I feel really bad for her too. Child psychology wasn't great back then, and I don't think Daisy and Fred really understood that Margaret needed more than just to be transported to a loving home to magically be okay. I think if Margaret lived today she would be diagnosed with some kind of mental illness - even back then, her empathy issues were noted. I'm sure Daisy tried her best, but she was woefully unprepared for a child like Margaret.

In 1916, Fred and Daisy filed for a divorce, which at that time was really quite shocking. Margaret seems to have wanted to go with her father, though the custody battle was really grueling and ugly and she may have just been trying to find a quick resolution. But who knows, really? Margaret also, later in life, attempted to have Daisy committed to a mental asylum! But Fred and Daisy eventually reconciled. I don't know if the divorce was ever even officially finalised. Maybe they Liz Taylor-Richard Burton'd it.

I have no idea what happened to Margaret. Ignoffo only writes this of her mental issues and eventual fate: "Margaret never successfully maintained warm relationships, and she often displayed impulsive and aggressive behaviour. Eventually, she became an alcoholic."

Margaret is in the middle of this photo, flanked by Carl and Theodore Hansen, the sons of Mrs. Winchester's foreman.

Still, despite a rocky family life, Daisy kept the traits I admire in her until the very end. She had a big heart, a free spirit, and a hell of a lot of loyalty. When Sarah Winchester died, it was Daisy who planned the funeral. It was Daisy who had her body shipped back to Connecticut to be laid to rest next to William and Annie. It was Daisy who accompanied the caskets of both Sarah and her mother Isabel (who had died 2 years earlier) back to New Haven, alone, without Fred and Margaret. You don't do that unless you love someone. There are very few people who I would ride cross-country with their casket, so I think that says a lot.

Records of Daisy's death, however, are scarce. Ancestry.com lists the date of her death as 7 June 1949, according to the California Death Index, in Santa Clara. It doesn't say how she died. Some people at work have claimed car accident, but I have no idea where they are getting that information, or if it's even true. Try as I might, I can't find a photo of her gravestone, or even any record of where she is buried.

It's a shame because if it is in California, I'd like to pay my respects. Since I can't, I hope this entry serves to show how much I really do respect her.
~N~