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 (colonel) admit that the character is named after Colonel Crane, the two men had met in 1814 at Fort Pike located on Lake Ontario in Sackets Harbor, New York. Irving was an aide-de-camp to New York Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins, who was inspecting defenses in the Sackets Harbor area. Crane's somewhat unusual and memorable first name Ichabod comes from the biblical name of the grandson of Eli the High Priest and son of Phinehas. As we were: the story of old Elizabethtown Volume 13 of Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society New Jersey Historical Society Collections Author Theodore Thayer Publisher