Legends and Lore of Sleepy Hollow and the Hudson Valley

by Jonathan Kruk

  On October 23, thousands of Hessians shipped up the Long Island Sound, landing at Davenport Neck to camp near the little French Huguenot and Quaker town of New Rochelle. Tales of Hessians bayoneting surrendering Americans at Brooklyn Heights spread throughout Westchester, proving not mere rumor. A British officer later described actions led by the German Count Von Donop: “Our Hessians and our brave Highlanders gave no quarter, and it was a fine sight to see with what alacrity they despatched the rebels with their bayonets.”

  Whenever someone whispered, “Hessians coming!” they put out their home fires, drove off their cattle and hid their children. Conscripted soldiers on loan to King George III from Landgrave Frederick III of Hesse-Kassel, they made a fearsome impression upon their arrival. Glowering beneath brass miter caps held in place with chin strap just below sharp mustaches, they sported a long, swordlike hair queue. The Hessians prompted many horror stories. Some said these cruel mercenaries fought only for war booty. Others mixed up the straps with the mustaches to assert, “Hessians have two rows of teeth!” “Beware!’ they warned. “If the ‘Hushman’ can’t find food, he’ll eat your children!” These were trying times in Westchester.

  The German forces, under Colonel von Rall and General Heister, though not cannibals, intended to quash the contemptible American rebels. They resented their radical disrespect for authority. Howe needed to rein in the battle-eager Von Rall when they arrived at White Plains.

  The British and Hessians assembled in a formidable force of about fourteen thousand men on October 28 at White Plains. An awestruck American captain, William Hull, wrote: “The approach of the British army. Its appearance was truly magnificent. A bright autumnal sun shed it’s full luster on the polished arms; and the rich array of dress and military equipage gave an imposing grandeur to the scene, as they advanced in all the pomp and circumstances of war to give us battle.”

  General Howe let loose his Hessians on that brilliant autumn day. Von Rall’s men charged Chatterton’s hill, but seasoned Delaware soldiers under Colonel John Haslet’s repelled them. While Howe deliberated, the angered Hessians fired their cannons. One of Haslet’s men suffered a gory leg wound, frightening off some of the Minutemen in other units. Alexander MacDougal steadied his troops, but the Americans began to slip. Howe, at last, ordered a full assault. The British Seventeenth Dragoons under Alexander Leslie advanced on the American center. Colonels Von Rall and Donop attacked from the left and center. They forded the waist-deep Bronx River. The Hessians raced the skull and crossbones–wearing British dragoons to get a first shot at the rebels.

  The woods on Chatterton Hill burned with cannon tow and spent paper bullet casings. Firing down, the Americans had managed to repel the first wave. A young captain Alexander Hamilton distinguished himself by keeping two small American cannons firing hotly. Rall drove his men to bayonet the Americans off the hill. Washington and his generals were forced to organize a hasty retreat. The Americans beat it back into North Castle.

  General Sir Henry Clinton urged Howe to attack Washington’s camps at night. Stung by an earlier ambush in Pelham where hundreds of Hessians fell in a “cowardly” attack from behind stone walls, Rall and Donop enthusiastically agreed. Howe rejected their plan as imprudent and out of character for a civilized army. They all agreed, though, on a big assault set for October 31. Fateful heavy rains changed this battle plan.

  Howe instead sent an exploratory column of dragoons with Hessian artillery down the Connecticut Road, now Lake Street in White Plains. They learned of an American supply depot at Horton’s Mill Pond, now Silver Lake. General William Heath stationed some artillery on the other side of the road near Merritt Hill. Apparently the Patriots had a resourceful captain like Alexander Hamilton keeping their powder dry. Here’s what Heath wrote in his journal:

  The artillery of the division was so well directed as to throw the British artillery-men several times into confusion. And finding that they could not here make any impression, drew back their pieces, the column not advancing. The British artillery now made a circuitous movement and came down toward the American right. Here, unknown to them were some 12 pounders; upon the discharge of which they made off with their field pieces as fast as their horses could draw them. A shot from the American cannon at this place took off the head of a Hessian artillery-man. They also left one of the artillery horses dead on the field. What other loss they sustained was not known.

  Thus, a Hessian on the battlefield at White Plains loses his head on Halloween! Other accounts show Americans heating their shot orange hot to scatter better, creating a pumpkinlike glowing projectile. Plus, according to believers in the supernatural, his spirit receives a ghost horse to ride. The following spring, American soldier and diarist Joseph Plumb Martin detailed the horror of finding “the bones of Hessians” scattered across the forlorn fields of White Plains. Bodies, especially if an officer’s, occasionally got transported away from the field of battle for burial. The Old Dutch Church yard of Sleepy Hollow is about nine miles from White Plains.

  THE HELPFUL HESSIAN

  One local legend hints at a reason for burying the headless Hessian in Sleepy Hollow. Van Tassel cousins Peter and Cornelius lived on adjacent farms in Elmsford a few miles south of Sleepy Hollow. Finding King George’s way of imposing taxes with an occupying army intolerable, the two rebelled. Declaring themselves American Patriots, they readied to fight in a militia band under Wolfert Acker. When the British fell to Gates and Arnold at Saratoga, they turned their attention to securing the land around New York City, especially Westchester County. Upon spying a British force patrolling near their homesteads, the cousins picked off several Redcoats from behind a stone wall. They escaped but not for long. Lieutenant Colonel Andreas Emmerick, an American Loyalist commander of dragoons, or horsemen, received orders on November 17, 1777, to punish the Van Tassels.

  Commanding Hessian dragoons with a small contingent of Loyalist soldiers, they rode from the Bronx into the no-man’s land of central Westchester. First, they burned down the tavern of Abraham Storms, a captain in Acker’s militia. Next, they surrounded the Van Tassel farms and demanded surrender. The Van Tassels countered with a few rounds of musket shot. Enraged, Emmerick ordered his Hessians to burn the houses without granting the families the customary fifteen minutes to clear out belongings. The Hessians hastily obeyed. Setting the eaves to flame, they dashed in to drag out the Van Tassels as the king’s prisoners. These poorly paid soldiers occasionally carried off whatever spoils of war they could grab from rebel houses.

  Captured, the Van Tassel cousins saw their homes go up in flames. Hands tied, Emmerick forced the pair to drive their own cattle down to New York City to feed the king’s army. The haze of war and smoke left Elizabeth van Tassel screaming. Two of her children remained in the burning house. Baby Leah slept in her cradle; clever Cornelius Jr. hid in his loft bedroom. Cornelius burst out of a shutter window to escape the heat and fire a musket. He leapt down into the looting soldiers, turning the gun into a swinging club. He knocked down a few Hessians and then fled. The teenage Cornelius escaped via an icy swim across the rushing Saw Mill River. He holed up on Beaver Mountain, one of those hills flanking Tarrytown.

  Mrs. van Tassel braved the flames to search for her little daughter but staggered back out weeping in vain. One Hessian pitied her. He tore back through the blaze for the baby. He found the child and a quilted feather-stuffed blanket. The Hessian turned Elizabeth’s tears to those of joy by presenting her with little Leah. Mother and child took refuge in a root cellar, while the helpful Hessian marched off empty handed. Feeling more pity, he had given the mother and child the quilt.

  A distinguished Sleepy Hollow cemetery guide connects this Hessian’s kindness to the headless Hessian. The Van Tassel family felt obligated to bury the latter after benefiting from the former. Naturally, the story is cited as the reason a decapitated foreign invader was laid to “rest” in the Old Dutch Church yard. The dates of each event, however, call into question this
explanation. White Plains, as Irving’s “nameless” battle, was fought in late October into early November 1776. Emmerick’s raid occurred November 17, 1777.

  There is still a way the grateful Elizabeth convinces the dominee of the Old Dutch Church to accept the headless Hessian for burial. There is nothing written by Washington Irving or primary sources stating when the headless Hessian got to the Old Dutch Church. Joseph Plumb Martin reported finding Hessian bones unburied around White Plains six months after the battle. Given the trying times in Westchester, the bones may have remained exposed in December 1777, when the Van Tassel cousins were released from prison. Elizabeth could have urged the men to then return the family a favor of a burial. A body interred without a head, without a marker, in the heart of a realm haunted by old Indian and German witch curses, remains a restless spirit to this day.

  THE LITTLE MAN IN BLACK’S TALE

  Washington Irving avidly collected stories of the American Revolution. Later he wrote an extensive biography of his namesake, George. One source of Irving’s tales sprang forth from Aaron Burr. The Irving family always maintained friendship with the disgraced former vice president. Indeed, in 1825, Washington Irving even wrote a sympathetic story about the Little Man in Black who is unfairly branded a witch. His readers knew the darkened man was Burr.

  Aaron Burr served as aide-de-camp to the “Old Wolf,” General Israel Putnam, who fought with Heath and Washington at the Battle of White Plains. One of Putnam’s militiamen from what is now Rockland County suffered a terrible fate. Abraham Onderdonk, according to a neighbor quoted in a Hackensack, New Jersey newspaper, “was killed by a cannon ball from the enemy separating his head from his shoulders.” Surely this is the kind of incident Burr would share with a wide-eyed Washington Irving around long-stemmed pipes and brandy. Distinguished Irving biographer Andrew Burstein concurs. “It is not unreasonable to consider that Irving might have known the details” of this tale. Other scholars say Irving converted the headless patriotic American into a reviled Hessian for a more dramatic effect. Why base The Legend on a true tale gleaned from the Little Man in Black, when it is more reasonable to accept that Washington Irving read about the Hessian’s decapitation in General Heath’s 1798 published memoir?

  Stories of headless soldiers floated in the gloomy Sleepy Hollow air when Irving first passed through in the 1790s. A documented account of a Hessian made headless on Halloween 1776 is the core of the kernel of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Add Jesse Merwin’s charivari, scores of local curses, spells and ghost stories, and Washington Irving certainly has enough material for his 1818 epiphany crossing London Bridge. Another rich source, however, for the lore of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow needs some exploration.

  GERMAN AND SCOTTISH SOURCES

  The Wild Huntsmen

  Henry “Nuncle” Brevoort received a revealing letter from his dear Lads of Kilkenny friend writing from England in May 1818. Washington Irving, while visiting with Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, wrote: “I have been some time past engaged in the study of the German language, and have got so far as to be able to read and splutter a little. It is a severe task…but the rich mine of German literature holds forth an abundant reward.”

  Washington Irving joined the craze then in Great Britain for all things German. Inspired by the “Deutsch,” a year later Irving had his reliable pal Brevoort publish in New York the Sketch Book, including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

  The Wild Huntsmen

  Be chased for ever through the wood;

  For ever roam the affrighted wild;

  And let thy fate instruct the proud,

  God’s meanest creature is his child

  Walter Reichart, accounting for Irving’s interest in German, wrote in the New York Folklore Quarterly that “Irving’s enthusiasm for German literature and particularly for German romance and folklore was not fanned into a bright flame until his visit to Walter Scott.” Washington’s new friend and mentor turned him on to German works with his book The Wild Huntsmen (aka The Chase). Scott translated it in 1796 from Gottfried August Burger’s 1778 story Die Wilde Jaeger.

  Burger possessed a passion for German marchen, a kind of fairy tale with humor and exaggeration. His Die Wilde Jaeger was an epic-styled poem based on the marchen “Wildgrave.” The lore tells of Faulkenburgh, a fierce forest keeper, who lives only for the thrill of the chase. Even in death, his compulsion raises his spirit from the grave. People living near the dark forest always trembled at the sound of the Wildgrave’s hunting horn and his baying dogs. A ghost-demon, he pursues his quarry, usually a stag, relentlessly through break and bramble, farm and village. Woe to those getting in the Wildgrave’s way. He hurls putrid flesh! Faulkenburgh even dares shatter the sanctity of the Sabbath!

  One young knight falls under the Wildgrave’s spell. This nobleman, enthralled at the rush of the hunt, calls out to the Wildgrave, “Gluck zu Falkenburgh (Good luck to you)!” Once again, you must be careful for what you wish! This ghastly spook, cloaked and mounted on a fiery horse, rasps, “Dost thou wish me good sport?” Suddenly the young knight is caught in the spell of the Wildgrave’s frenzied chase. Hounds baying, horn blasting, they crash into a hermit’s church. There a monk utters a prayer. The Wildgrave’s bones illuminate, but before vanishing, he cries, “Thou shalt share of the game!” The goblin hurls a piece of some rancid carcass at the young noble. Then,

  ’Twas hush’d:—One flash, of sombre glare,

  With yellow tinged the forests brown;

  Uprose the Wildgrave’s bristling hair,

  And horror chill’d each nerve and bone

  Clearly Irving’s Headless Horseman follows the Wild Huntsmen’s lead. When the headless Hessian disappears, he “turned into a skeleton springs away over the tree-tops with a clap of thunder vanish in a flash of fire.” A goblin also brains Crane with some strange fleshy thing. The Legend too has a prayer offering as a way to ward off the demon. It just doesn’t work because the schoolmaster is too scared to sing his ghost-busting psalm. Irving explains, “His parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave.”

  The galloping Hessian rides on, 1893 illustration. By George Boughton for Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving.

  Reichart, a meticulous researcher of all things German in Washington Irving, discovered another source of the Sleepy Hollow Horseman. Irving’s alter ego, Geoffrey Crayon, searches among the papers of Diedrich Knickerbocker to find The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Reichart found Irving’s bookstore receipt as proof of the German influence. It listed a 1791 book called Legenden von Rubenzahl by J.C.A. Musaus. Irving’s clever tongue naturally stuck to the roof of his mouth when asked whether he borrowed from the Germans. Discovering, then, the story pattern, along with a few closely rewritten passages floated from Musaus into The Legend, reveals much of the Headless Horseman’s origins.

  Number-Nip V

  Number-Nip V appears in Legenden von Rubenzahl as a kind of mischievous imp, not unlike those encountered above the Tappan Zee. A denizen of the mysterious forests of Germany, he plays trickster to local notables on their adventures. Here, Number-Nip V disguises himself as a headless goblin to seek revenge on an obnoxious party of nobles and a flappable fellow named John. Out in the wilderness on a carriage ride, away from the “snug security of Breslaw,” they encounter a peculiar apparition:

  John…saw, to his utter confusion, stalking on about a stone’s throw before the coach, a jet-black figure, of a size exceeding that of a man, crowned with a broad Spanish tippet: but what was the most suspicious circumstance in this whole appearance, was its being without an head. If the coach halted, the figure drove on [and] it proceeded also.

  Here’s Irving’s similar passage from The Legend: “In the dark shadow of the grove, in the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen and towering. It stirred not but seemed to be gathering up the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveler.”


  Ichabod makes the same mistake the young nobleman does in Die Wilde Jaeger by accosting a goblin. “Who are you?” True to the tradition, this sets off the wild chase, with the halts and starts to shake off the goblin, found in Legenden von Rubenzahl and in The Legend. Musaus slips in humor more overtly than does Irving:

  “Who’s there? What is all that noise for?”

  “Your honour,” replied John with a trembling voice, “Be so good as only just to look out the window; for, Lord have mercy upon us! There walks a man without a head close beside us!”

  “Blockhead as thou art,” replied the Countess, “Of what is thy vulgar imagination dreaming? And if that was the case,” continues she in a tone of raillery, “A man without an head is no rarity; there are plenty in Breslaw and other places.”

  Sleepy Hollow, to be sure, is one of those other places. Indeed, “Gotham,” the nickname Washington Irving gave to New York City for its heedless hectic people, is yet another. Thus, the stage is set for the full sighting of each story’s monster. They first attempt to ward off the creature with prayer. Recall Ichabod trying to sing his protective psalm. The idea occurs here in Musuas’s tale: “John fortified himself with all the prayers he knew against evil sprits; with a long string of pater-nosters and benedicites into the bargain, reeking all the time with a cold sweat.”

  The pattern of a fits and starts pursuit with an emergence from the shadows again is set by Musuas and followed by Irving. Here Number-Nip V, disguised as the headless goblin, is discovered by John: