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Fact and fiction in Sleepy Hollow cemetery

Washington Irving liked to blur fact and fiction so he would have appreciated the confusing mix of history and legend that can be found today just to the north of the (real) town of Sleepy Hollow, New York - a seventeenth century name which was around long before he wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in 1820.

If you park just south of the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, you can walk to it along the main road, across a bridge with a sign telling you that "The Headless Horseman Bridge ...formerly spanned this stream at this spot."

Really? But wasn't the headless horseman Irving's invention? Well, nothing is exactly clear and in the story, Irving surrounds the tale with extra layers of uncertainty. Most readers will have encountered it as the work not of Irving himself but of "Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.", the fictitious author of his Sketchbook, in which Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle are the most famous chapters. 

But this particular story is not even supposedly by "Geoffrey Crayon". It appears under the heading:

FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS
OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.

Knickerbocker, an ancient Dutch historian, warns his readers - if he ever expected that his "papers" would have any - that those entering the "sleepy region" in which the story is set are sure "in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions."

So where does that leave the solid, real-life bridge by the cemetery with traffic crossing it all day? Well, the fact that it's not old isn't a problem because even Knickerbocker acknowledges that the original bridge had gone in his time: "over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge" (my italics).

But that doesn't leave the tourist industry much to work with. The local site Visitsleepyhollow.com is admirably honest, admitting that "unfortunately, the bridge where Ichabod Crane was unseated by a pumpkin [which he mistook for the head of the headless horseman] is the most popular destination in Sleepy Hollow that doesn’t exist".

The road which crosses today's bridge even comes from a different direction from that described in the story - so today's bridge is not really even a replacement for the old one anyway. The best that Visitsleepyhollow.com can offer is a rickety old bridge somewhere else in the cemetery that "is rustic enough for a selfie".

But if you keep walking, there is more to see here than the site of a fictitious incident. There is a real church - dating back to 1697, the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, now the oldest existing church in New York State. It gets a mention in Irving's Sleepy Hollow.

The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust-trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent, whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement.
From The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. 

It is from one of the graves in the churchyard that the spectre which haunted Ichabod Crane is supposed to have emerged. I visited in search not of headless horsemen, but of Irving himself as this is now his resting place.

The churchyard gate was locked, with a large notice saying the cemetery had closed at 4.30pm. Disappointed, my wife and I walked up to the church. Beyond it, we found a path leading into the churchyard with no restrictions and not even a gate to open. We wandered in, past many more notices warning us about the 4.30 closure. Leaflets were on offer with maps of the cemetery, marking its most illustrious inmates, Irving included.

After a few minutes of searching, we found him. His grave is nothing fancy. It sits in an Irving plot, surrounded by family members. There are many grander graves in grander family plots. But the author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has found his home in the site he disguised with layers of creativity and mystery. 




There was one more blurring of fact and fiction to note: the woman who Ichabod and his rival both love is Katrina Van Tassel, the only daughter of a wealthy Dutch farmer. She is part of his invention, but not perhaps entirely: he bought his house in nearby Tarrytown from a family called Van Tassel. Nothing about Sleepy Hollow is entirely true or entirely invented.  
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