Sleepy Hollow

The 1820 story

The Sketch Book was published in New York by C. S. Van Winkle, and the copyright certificate for the sixth number is dated February 10, 1820. The story's subtitle says it was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker. A postscript has a storyteller at "a corporation meeting of the ancient city of the Manhattoes" admit, "I don't believe one half of it myself." The text spells the village Tarry Town, and says the Horseman is "said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper." It never names the church, the river, or the manor.

In a letter of December 29, 1819, Irving called the story "suggested by recollections of scenes and stories about Tarrytown." His nephew Pierre M. Irving wrote that the outline was sketched in Birmingham after Irving's brother-in-law Van Wart recalled "a waggish fiction of one Brom Bones" racing the devil "for a bowl of milk-punch," and that Irving expanded it in London. Irving's letters and the village's history cite no earlier local legend of a headless horseman. Historic Hudson Valley notes that some scholars place the source in Germany, in the Grimms' "Hans Jagenteufel," who is condemned to ride headless, and others in Ireland, in the Dullahan.

The church

Irving's text puts the church "on a knoll, surrounded by locust trees and lofty elms." The Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow is the building usually identified with it. Its own FAQ says "most historians date the church's construction to 1685, the year engraved on the bell." The National Historic Landmark nomination calls 1697 the "date more generally accepted." A 1926 booklet from the History Research Society of the Tappan Zee gives a foundation in 1684 and a dedication in 1697. All of them agree that the congregation organized in 1697. Lightning started a fire in the church in 1837, and the nomination says at least 50 burials had taken place in the Burying Ground by about 1683. The church believes the ground predates the building. In 2026, the church is raising money for roof work that it puts at about $250,000.

The cemetery and the grave

Irving's grave is in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which dates itself to 1849. Its first name was Tarrytown Cemetery. On April 21, 1849, Irving wrote to Lewis Gaylord Clark that the trustees were "aware of the blunder which they have committed in naming it the 'Tarrytown'." After the letter was republished in 1864, the trustees applied to the legislature, and the name changed in 1865. The cemetery's list of notable burials has 61 names, including Andrew Carnegie, Walter Chrysler, and William Rockefeller.

At Irving's funeral on December 1, 1859, the procession crossed "the bridge immortalized in the Legend." By 1881 a newspaper said the headstone had been "chipped by vandals," and in 1887 Clarence Cook wrote in The Century that relic hunters "so chip and hammer the stone." The 1926 booklet describes a slab "designed to foil souvenir collectors who have carried off piece-meal two earlier stones." In a 2024 Columbia College Today profile, the cemetery's president, Philip Zegarelli, said of the stone, "It's his third."

The village vote

North Tarrytown was incorporated as a village in the 1870s; sources give 1871 and 1874. A petition with 765 signatures led to the referendum. On Tuesday, December 10, 1996, voters chose Sleepy Hollow by 1,304 to 710, and the trustees made it official the next day. A village historian calls the name "a later, Anglicized version" of Van der Donck's 1655 "Slapershaven," while the church's FAQ says Irving "was the first to use the name." The 1988 referendum on the same change had failed, 1,322 to 794.

The cemetery is open Monday through Friday from 8am to 4:30pm and on Saturday and Sunday from 8:30am to 4:30pm. Individuals and families may walk or drive the grounds, and free maps are in the box at the cemetery office. Tripods, drones, and grave rubbings are prohibited, and video, commercial photography, and photo shoots need written authorization. Tickets for the 2026 tours are sold in advance on the cemetery's site. The Original Knickerbocker tour takes 1 hour and runs weekends at 1pm and 3pm through Thanksgiving weekend and on October weekdays at 3pm. The Evening Lantern tour takes 2 hours and runs daily at 7pm in October.

The Burying Ground is open from 8:30am to 4:30pm daily. In October 2026, the church is open Fridays from 4:30pm for organ music and weekends from 11am to 4pm with docents. It has no restrooms and no parking of its own, only a small lot inside the cemetery's south gate. The church is 0.45 mile from the cemetery office. Philipsburg Manor, at 381 North Broadway, is 0.17 mile from the church, and Historic Hudson Valley's Twilight Village runs there on Friday through Sunday evenings through October 31, with advance tickets only.