Jesse Merwin and Ichabod Crane by Lisa LaMonica

Kinderhook is where America’s first ghost story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow with the Headless Horseman started to form. Sleepy Hollow main character Ichabod Crane, the school teacher from Connecticut was based on author Washington Irving’s Kinderhook close friend Jesse Merwin, also a teacher from Connecticut living in Kinderhook by 1808. The Headless Horseman from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was created during this time becoming a terrifying icon known the world over, giving this region and the Hudson Valley, practically ownership over Halloween. We know from  one important source, a letter exists certifying that Jesse Merwin was the prototype for Ichabod Crane. That letter came from former Pres. Martin Van Buren: “This is to certify that I have known J. Merwin of Kinderhook for about 3d of a century & believe him to be a man of honour & integrity; and that he is the same person celebrated in the writings of the Hon. 
Washington Irving under the character of Ichabod Crane in his famous Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Another former Kinderhook resident, Harold Van Santvoord in 1898 wrote an article for the New York Times with his point of view. Santvoord had known Jesse Merwin’s sons who shared their family’s history with him. While referring to Jesse Merwin as Ichabod Crane, he stated that: “I have taken great pains to look up the M e r w i n genealogy, and through c o u r t e s y of a son of Ichabod Crane, still living here and highly esteemed for his uprightness of character, have has access to a printed record tracing back this family of English and Welsh extraction on American soil to 1645, when the original immigrant became the owner of a large tract of land lying mostly in the town of Milford, Conn. Descendants of Ichabod asseverate that after migrating from Milford, CT, he lived continuously in Kinderhook”. How exciting to think about these real and imagined characters known the world over having their place then and now still in Kinderhook. 
“In the dark shadow of the grove, he beheld something huge, misshapen, black and towering. It stirred not, but 
seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveler.”