Volume 17 , Issue 39

Washington Irving's Ichabod Crane

In The New York Times, out of New York, New York, dated 26 March 1898, page 24, we find this concerning Washington Irving's short story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and the possible inspiration for the character Ichabod Crane and the random, suggested recollections of scenes and stories about Tarrytown.

Found on Newspapers.com

Irving's Ichabod Crane

To the Editor of The New York Times:

I have noticed with interest the article in your columns concerning the locality of the legend of Sleepy Hollow. Why not settle the question by calling in the author as a witness? I find in his published letters one addressed to his brother Ebenezer, in which he speaks as follows concerning this very legend: "It is a random thing, suggested by recollections of scenes and stories about Tarrytown."

This statement certainly ought to be sufficient, but it is more fully given by the author's biographer, Pierre M. Irving, who writes thus - vide "Life and Letters of Washington Irving," Volume 1, page 448:

"The outline of this story had been sketched more than a year before at Birmingham, after a conversation with his brother-n-law, Van Wart, who had been dwelling upon some recollections of his early years at Tarrytown, and had touched upon a waggish fiction of one Brom Bones, a wild blade, who professed to fear nothing and boasted of having once met the devil on return from a nocturnal frolic and run a race with him for a bowl of milk punch." As MR. Donald G. Mitchell, in referring to this matter, mentions Tarrytown as the scene of the legend, it is evident that his statement is based on the best possible authority. -- W. F., Honeybee Falls, NY, March 22, 1898.
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