“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is fiction. Washington Irving’s schoolmaster, his rival and the Headless Horseman are inventions. The setting is real, and so is the ground the story walks over.
The Horror
The story appeared in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., published in instalments in 1819 and 1820 under a pseudonym. Irving wrote it while living in Birmingham, England. It is set around 1790 in a secluded valley near Tarrytown, New York. The ghost is a Hessian trooper, a German soldier in British service, who lost his head in a battle of the American Revolution.
The documented background is thin. A record exists of an anonymous Hessian decapitated by a cannonball at the Battle of White Plains. There is no documented burial for him, and nothing connects him to Sleepy Hollow beyond speculation. A rumour that a headless corpse was found in the hollow after the battle is likewise only a possible inspiration. Headless horsemen also appear in older European folklore, and parts of the tale may trace to that tradition.
Some of Irving’s characters have candidate models. Jesse Merwin, a schoolteacher at Kinderhook, is a suggested model for Ichabod Crane, supported by a letter Irving endorsed. Local tradition around Tarrytown instead claims Samuel Youngs. Neither is proven.
The Legend
The popular notion that a real Hessian lies in the churchyard of the Old Dutch Church, the model for the Horseman, is not confirmed. The Old Dutch Church has no documented Hessian burial. It is best treated as local legend.
The Modern Relic
The Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow was begun about 1685, financed by Frederick Philipse, and completed between then and about 1697. A marble tablet gives 1699, but it was placed in the nineteenth century. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1961. Its three-acre burying ground is one of the oldest in the United States, and it adjoins the larger Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which is separate. Irving is buried in the oldest part of that cemetery, roughly 150 feet from the graves of people said to have inspired his characters.
The village of North Tarrytown voted in 1996 to rename itself Sleepy Hollow, adopting the name from the story. Village Hall has a stained glass window of the Headless Horseman. The church holds worship services from June to September.
