In the Asbury Methodist churchyard, on Richmond Avenue south of Signs Road, rests a figure who inadvertently became an indelible name in American literature.
Before you is the gravesite of Col. Ichabod Crane, a military man who was an acquaintance of author Washington Irving. He is buried here with his wife and brother as well as Juan, a Native American boy who accompanied Crane after he was stationed in Oregon. Crane later learned (to his horror, by all accounts) that the protagonist of Irving’s famed 1820 story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow bore his name.
Repeatedly vandalized over the years, the Crane grave marker was restored anew in 2004 by the Joseph G. Hall and Sons Monument Company of Pleasant Plains, Staten Island.
Col. Crane’s house stood nearby in New Springville until the 1980s, when it was torn down and a warehouse built in its place. Crane’s presence has not been lost on developers: there is a street near the cemetery called Sleepy Hollow Road.
Much more from this perhaps unnoticed area of Staten Island on this FNY page.
4/18/15
4 comments
The obelisk was a popular marker design during the mid 19th century. This example reminds me of the one from 1835 standing at the B&O Railroad’s Thomas Viaduct in Maryland. A picture is at http://www.trainweb.org/oldmainline/oml2.htm#thomas_viaduct_obelisk
I never knew this. You find the greatest of greats…
The Spirit of Old Father Knickerbocker himself must guide FNY’s Webmaster to some of his discoveries. How else can one explain this weirdly wonderful page?
Given that the “Sleepy Hollow” story makes the fictional Ichabod Crane look like a fool, has him terrified and fearful of ghosts, ineptly pursuing Katrina Van Tassel’s hand, and being humiliated by Brom Bones, so much that he flees town, I’m not surprised the real Ichabod Crane was annoyed.