Irving, while he was an aide-de-camp to New York Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, met an army captain named Ichabod Crane in Sackets Harbor, New York, during an inspection tour of fortifications in 1814. Irving may have patterned the character after Jesse Merwin, who taught at the local schoolhouse in Kinderhook, further north along the Hudson River, where Irving spent several months in 1809.A letter from Merwin Irving was endorsed in Irving's handwriting Alternatively, it is claimed by many in Tarrytown that Samuel Youngs is the individual from whom Irving drew his character. Author Gary Denniss asserts that while Crane is loosely based on Merwin, it may include elements from Youngs's life. thumbnail|right|Ichabod Crane, Respectfully Dedicated to Washington Irving. William J. Wilgus (1819–53), artist chromolithograph, c. 1856With "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is one of Irving's most anthologized, studied, and adapted sketches. Both stories are often paired together in books and other representations, and both are included in surveys of early American literature and Romanticism. Irving's depictions of regional culture and themes of progress versus tradition, supernatural intervention in the commonplace, and the plight of the individual outsider in a homogeneous community permeate both stories and helped develop a unique sense of American cultural and existential selfhood during the early 19th century.
Irving, while he was an aide-de-camp to New York Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, met an army captain named Ichabod Crane in Sackets Harbor, New York, during an inspection tour of fortifications in 1814. ,Irving may have patterned the character after Jesse Merwin, who taught at the local schoolhouse in Kinderhook, further north along the Hudson River, where Irving spent several months in 1809.A letter from Merwin Irving was endorsed in Irving's handwriting Alternatively, it is claimed by many in Tarrytown that Samuel Youngs is the individual from whom Irving drew his character. Author Gary Denniss asserts that while Crane is loosely based on Merwin, it may include elements from Youngs's life. thumbnail|right|Ichabod Crane, Respectfully Dedicated to Washington Irving. William J. Wilgus (1819–53), artist chromolithograph, c. 1856With "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is one of Irving's most anthologized, studied, !and adapted sketches. Both stories are often p:aired together in books and other representations, and both are included in surveys of early American literature and Romanticism. Irving's depictions of regional culture and themes of progress versus tradition, supernatural intervention in the commonplace, and the plight of the individual outsider in a homogeneous community permeate both stories and helped develop a unique sense of American cultural and existential selfhood during the early 19th century.