Ichabod Crane Central School District in 1809, where he wrote the satire, 'A History of New York'. Later, he wrote the short stories Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow which take place regionally. The Kinderhook school district is named "Ichabod Crane". for the Irving character, Ichabod Crane, which was based on the original Kinderhook schoolmaster named Jesse Merwin. Irving and Merwin became friends in Kinderhook, where they boarded together at the Van Ness home, and the two friends continued a pen-pal correspondence for thirty years. The Columbia County Historical Society (New York) owns the original Kinderhook Schoolhouse named after the Irving character
Ichabod Crane take care to feed him in the evenings, during which he is happy to listen to their tales about supernatural events in the settlement. Ichabod is said to have carried a copy of Cotton Mather's "History of New England Witchcraft", which he firmly believes. He was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled. He administered justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the burden off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of the strong. The revenue arising from