Legends and Lore of Sleepy Hollow and the Hudson Valley

by Jonathan Kruk

  Bold Brom, of course, cunningly spooked away Ichabod in order to escort Katrina to the altar at the Old Dutch Church. How could Katrina resist “his over-bearing roughness” tempered by his “strong dash of waggish good humor”? His method has roots in ancient European and Dutch customs carried on in the New World. Brom practiced an old trick in using a disguise to frighten off a rival.

  Brom Bones and Pumpkin Head, 1893 illustration. By George Boughton for Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving.

  KATRINA

  Could that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival? Heaven only knows, not I!

  Katrina van Tassel stepped out into the American landscape from a tradition of independent Dutch women. A colonial English woman was her husband’s “femme posse,” or female possession. If widowed, an English woman’s inheritance had to be managed by her closest male relative. New Netherland laws (which the Dutch were allowed to keep after English takeover of the colony in 1664) gave men and women mutual wills. Indeed, the Philipse family became rich in part because Frederick married Margaret Hardenbroeck, a Dutch widow who had inherited her own fortune.

  Young, independent, flirtatious coquettes no doubt beguiled Washington Irving up and down the Hudson Valley. Up in Columbia County, they make a strong case for Helena van Alen as Katrina’s inspiration. A beauty, as feisty as Matilda Hoffman was fay, Helena certainly charmed Irving. The vivacious Eleanor van Tassel, however, really gave Irving his Katrina. Daughter of the fighting American Patriot Jacob, she became the object of a raid during the war. Loyalist Cow-Boys attacked the Van Tassel farm, the old Wolfert’s Roost. They took cattle, set the house on fire and couldn’t resist carrying off the budding Eleanor. Cursing and kicking, she hollered for help. The equally spirited Van Tassel women, in true Dutch form, took charge of the situation. They clobbered the Cow-Boys to rescue their “Laney.”

  The innumerable Van Tassel clan had spread throughout Hudson Valley by the early 1800s. Eleanor’s family dwelled at Wolfert’s Roost when young Washington hunted nearby. She lived in Sleepy Hollow for her entire long life, into her nineties, and no doubt knew Washington Irving. His sister boarded at the Van Tassel family tavern. Granted, the gravestone for Catriena van Tassel taken on face value seems to say she is The Legend’s Katrina. This Catriena was over a decade older than Laney van Tassel and not noted for her high spirits. Names matter to Washington Irving. He selected two very popular monikers, Katrina and Van Tassel, for his heroine. Thus, Irving puts forth her character as the quintessential young Dutch woman of the Hudson Valley.

  The Legend’s Katrina never kicks or curses; she dances with the kinetic Ichabod Crane, accepting all his “ooglings” just to make Brom jealous. Is she duplicitous or just plain clever? She could not bear Brom’s courtship practices, which “consist[ed] of a lot of pawing.” She expected something else from him: a marriage proposal. Ichabod misread her intentions at the quilting frolic. If the Yankee schoolmaster had been aware of the local Dutch courtship customs, he would have known Katrina’s intention earlier. When a Dutch woman lets a man come calling, she indicates her level of interest by providing her suitor with a pipe. The fancier the pipe, the more she fancies him! The only pipe fetched for psalm-master Ichabod was the pitch pipe. Katrina, like all the countrywomen, finds the odd pedagogue charming but doesn’t take him seriously. Her father, of course, took comfort in his daughter’s wiles, leaving Balt to puff, worry free, on his own pipe.

  ICHABOD

  The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

  When death took away Maltida Hoffman, all those who knew Washington Irving took pity on him. He lost his beloved, shy fiancée just before her eighteenth birthday. Some see Matilda in Katrina and Irving in Ichabod. The beguiling Miss van Tassel is the sincere Miss Hoffman’s complete opposite. Irving often fell for serious, ethereal teen beauties. He set these girls on pedestals to be adored and abandoned. Ichabod adored the beautiful Katrina but salivated the more for the bounty of her father’s farm.

  One story suggests the real Sleepy Hollow schoolmaster at the time of Irving’s visits became the template for Ichabod Crane. Samuel Youngs came from New England like Ichabod. He left the area to study law, winding up, like the fictional schoolmaster, serving in the courts. Youngs, though, was no trembling scarecrow! He fought with distinction during the Revolutionary War.

  Another tale of the source for that “worthy wight” schoolmaster comes from Washington Irving’s letters. Writing to his friend Sir Walter Scott, with whom he stayed in Abbotsford, the young American author recalled a local teacher he met in Scotland: “That worthy wight Lockie Longlegs, whose appearance I shall never forget striding along the profile of a knoll in his red night cap, with his flimsy garments fluttering about him.”

  Curiously, the story gains credence since the letter was written while Irving worked on The Sketchbook in England. Granted, Lockie looks like Ichabod. There’s more to the story of Ichabod than his beaky gangling appearance. An actual account of a chase by a rival in a ghost guise came Irving’s way while in Kinderhook.

  When three deaths, including Matilda’s, threatened to overwhelm Irving, William van Ness invited the mourning writer to Lindenwald, his estate in Kinderhook, Columbia County, New York. The patchwork fields and gentle hills and the Van Alens, the Van Alstynes and other old Dutch families together would heal Irving’s broken heart. Further, they’d later provide some inspiration!

  Washington Irving at Kinderhook found a tonic for his woe in the Dutch tales he heard there. Tucked away from the changing cities of Albany and New York, Kinderhook stood as one of those isolated Dutch communities where the “customs remained fixed.” Indeed, when President Martin van Buren retired there, he fondly recalled chatting with an old woman who told him tales in “Holland, not American Dutch.” Kinderhook gave Irving the true core of The Legend. Once again, a key tale of Dutch Americans comes from an outsider, a Connecticut Yankee and itinerant schoolmaster named Jesse Merwin.

  THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN CHARIVARI OF KINDERHOOK

  Merwin had been courting Jane van Dyck, a local Dutch woman, for several years when he fell into a trap set by local custom. Abram van Alstyne, who never expressed any interest in Jane, burst into the schoolhouse to threaten, “Jesse Merwin! Stay away from my lady!” The brawny blacksmith looked ready to teach the teacher a tough lesson.

  Later that evening, Merwin went calling on his sweetheart. She offered him something unusual: an ornate tobacco pipe. The schoolmaster still made no offer of marriage. Riding back on a borrowed horse, a peculiar figure silently accosted Merwin. The stranger wore an old soldier’s uniform beneath a huge cloak. Imagine Merwin relating his horror when describing to Irving, “My travel companion, had no head!” Next, the headless rider gave an uncouth howl and chased after the schoolmaster. Wailing and raging, the stranger attempted to drive Merwin away. The voice, though unearthly, was familiar. Merwin recognized his said rival, Abram van Alstyne!

  Both raced off without exchanging a word. The next day, the scared Merwin went straight to Jane and begged her to marry him.

  Brom van Alstyne, of course, brought the biggest smile of all to the wedding. He led the mischief makers in tossing grain against the couple’s window on their first night together. He always gave a knowing laugh whenever the
subject of Merwin’s courtship came up.

  Jesse Merwin had been moved to marry by the ancient custom of a charivari. The community often took action when a couple dillydallied or shilly-shallied. Tradition called for friends and family to test the couple’s love. They’d either drive the man off or drive him to the altar. This explains Brom van Alstyn’s “claim” on Jane, followed by the charivari. Dressing up as a ghost, he hides his identity, covering up the test. The chased man could always claim that a ghost frightened him. He wasn’t tricked into marriage! Of course, if the charivari moved the couple to marry, a great celebration followed. It’s been documented that Merwin confided the story of his charivari to Washington Irving. It’s fair to say Ichabod’s wild St. Vitus with Katrina was part of her plan to move Brom into a charivari.

  Merwin welcomed the Hudson Valley Dutch variation of a charivari. West of the Mississippi, the tradition known as a “shivaree” served as a way the community acknowledged newlyweds. They’d dress in costumes, often as ghosts, to serenade and blast horns below the couple’s window. Nineteenth-century upstate New Yorkers also used the term “horning” when driving a man into or away from a marriage. Here Brom van Alstyne drove his friend Jesse Merwin to Jane van Dyck. A less worthy wight may have just kept on running to suffer the fate of having to become a city lawyer!

  JESSE MERWIN, THE REAL SCHOOLMASTER

  Sharing the courtship story led to a strong friendship between Merwin and Irving. Later, the estate became famed as Martin van Buren’s country retreat. The eighth president boasted that Irving met his Katrina, Brom Bones and, of course, Ichabod while in Kinderhook. Van Buren himself certified in a letter Jesse Merwin as the model for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’s Yankee schoolmaster. Years later, Irving gave his own proof to Merwin. The author addressed a letter to Jesse Merwin as “the original Ichabod Crane.”

  Jesse Merwin’s charming, sparse schoolhouse still stands in Kinderhook, complete with the teacher’s initials carved in the wood. The well-preserved Old Van Alen House evokes the setting for a courting schoolmaster and Katrina. The Columbia County Historical Society lists these hallowed places as the inspiration for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Their claim holds up in the local lore and landscape.

  COLONEL ICHABOD CRANE

  There lived an actual man named Ichabod Crane. An officer during the War of 1812, Major Ichabod Crane’s campaign adventures in Sackets Harbor, New York, though noteworthy, were not exceptionally heroic. His exploits interested Washington Irving enough for a meeting after the war. It provided the author with an onomatopoeia description for a bird-beaked scarecrow of a schoolmaster. Lockie Longlegs alliterates, lopes and looks good on paper, but the name Ichabod Crane sang out for a Yankee pedagogue.

  Colonel Ichabod Crane, circa 1857. Unknown photographer, Photo Lab Archive, Santa Cruz, California.

  Later, some sources say the real war bird objected vigorously to this appropriation of his moniker. He felt tainted by association with the snipe-nosed teacher. One look at the daguerreotype of an elderly Colonel Crane shows a resemblance in name only. Irving’s Ichabod shaped the archetypical, charmingly clueless nerd we love to frighten. He is the geek who goes on to get some revenge on the bullies either as a lawyer or a Sleepy Hollow ghost.

  MERWIN’S GHOST

  A relatively recent bit of lore says Jesse Merwin and his wife, Jane, still “dwell” around their former home. A retired actress from New York City bought the place as a summer retreat. She made some repairs and gave the farmhouse a coat of paint but kept everything as it was—save for one thing. Curiosity moved the former thespian to turn over a couple of garden steppingstones made of old grave markers. She hoped to read their inscriptions, but they were too worn.

  A fierce storm that night knocked down two maple trees on her property. Local folk say the actress learned the markers belonged to Jesse and his wife. Their spirits, apparently, do not take kindly to being disturbed!

  FINAL WORD

  Scholar Daniel G. Hoffman tells why the schoolmaster earned the charivari-style drive off from Baltus van Tassel’s farm and daughter Katrina: “Brom Bones stays in the village and gets the girl. He deserved her more than Ichabod, for while the scholar danced and counted his stuffed pigs, Brom experienced two human emotions; jealousy and love.”

  Chapter 8

  HEADLESS!

  The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the revolutionary war; and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance… The body of the trooper, having been buried in the church-yard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head; and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the church-yard before daybreak (TLSH, 5).

  Alas, poor Ichabod Crane! He coveted Katrina van Tassel’s bounty more than her beauty. Thus a ruffian disguised as the Headless Horseman frightens the Yankee schoolmaster away in a Dutch-style charivari. A spirit dominant over Ichabod, Sleepy Hollow and current imaginations certainly holds all the powers of the air.

  Scholars often assert that Washington Irving viewed his success and the lasting power of The Legend with the same perspective Baltus van Tassel had on his farm. “He was satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it.” They picture Irving’s spirit looking over all the Headless Horseman movies, amusements, computer games, place names, sculptures and storytellers with amusement. Yet he just confesses to borrowing the tale from the oral tradition, not German folklore or a Revolutionary War journal. Years after The Legend was published, Irving suggested a source. Of course, he still maintained the shabby gentleman Diedrich Knickerbocker gathered the legend while visiting a dilapidated mill and reported back to Irving: “I verily believe it was to his [Diedrich’s] conference with his African sage, and the precious revelations of the good dame of the spinning wheel, that we are indebted for the surprising though true history of Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman, which has since astounded and edified the world.”

  Into Sleepy Hollow, 2008. Photo by Todd Atteberry www.thehistorytrekker.com.

  Confessing that he learned his most-famed tale from a humble pair from Sleepy Hollow makes for a charming story. A miller and spinner would certainly have many chances to gather and share local lore. Irving’s revelation, however, rings true. Given the storied nature of both Washington Irving and Sleepy Hollow, there are more tales to the making of the Headless Horseman.

  Granted, Irving listened to tales from the many denizens of Sleepy Hollow. He also took to heart Jesse Merwin’s charivari. He borrowed ideas found in Walter Scott’s library of German and Scottish lore. The surprising truth is that there was a real headless Hessian!

  THE “NAMELESS” BATTLE OF WHITE PLAINS

  Westchester County endured many skirmishes, raids, burnings and battles during the fight for independence from Great Britain. Thirty thousand men clashed in the swamps and on the hills at the Battle of White Plains, making it one of the biggest conflicts in the entire war. Size alone does not make White Plains the site of the “nameless battle” Washington Irving gives for the site of the Hessian’s demise. The proof lies in the story of the battle itself.

  George Washington’s Continental army and militiamen suffered a bitter defeat on Long Island at the Battle of Brooklyn Heights. They managed a clandestine escape to Manhattan thanks to the stealthy boatman of Colonel John Glover and with help from a timely windstorm. Tens of thousands of British troops, including several brigades from Germany, had arrived in the summer of 1776 to stop the reb
ellion. The British commander, General William Howe, looked for an opportunity to deliver a “sharp but not a serious blow” to the Americans. Sympathetic to their plight, Howe hoped to employ a show of force to frighten the wayward rebels to drop arms and negotiate peace. Consequently, he fought with the deliberation usually found in a game of chess.

  Hessian’s ford on the Bronx River, White Plains, New York, 2009. Photo by Todd Atteberry, www.thehistorytrekker.com.

  Howe, for example, ordered a regiment of Hessian jaegers and grenadiers under Colonel von Donop to march up Manhattan to mop up the ragtag American militia. When Washington heard shots from his post in Harlem, he dashed down to take charge. He found his men dropping their weapons and fleeing in terror before the dreaded Hessians. Even experienced troops who had stood their ground months earlier at Bunker Hill in Boston high-tailed it when the Germans hit the Broadway. Some saw Washington lose his temper, claiming he struck retreating men with the back of his sword. Others say he froze in shock over his soldiers’ cowardice. He barely escaped capture.

  Later, Washington, along with a host of his best generals—Lee, Heath, Putnam, Sullivan, MacDougal, Spencer and Greene—decided to make a stand on the hilltops above a white misty pine swamp the Natives called Quarropas. Showing they would fight at the village of White Plains, they hoped to buy the American Revolution the precious time needed to hold off the British army.

  On October 22, Israel Putnam manned Purdy Hill and Washington took the center line, with William Heath setting the right flank on Hatfield Hill. They made redoubts out of cornstalks, mud and high hopes. General Alexander MacDougal commanded Pennsylvanian backwoodsmen, while the Massachusetts fishermen dug in on a long ridge near Michael Chatterton’s farm. The land belonged to the prominent Tory with a countryseat in Sleepy Hollow named Frederick Philipse.