It may be all in a name to you, but North Tarrytown takes its legends seriously...now.

By a vote of 1304 to 710, the New York state town voted to officially change its name from North Tarrytown to Sleepy Hollow in an effort to capitalize on tourism. Although Washington Irving's story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, about Ichabod Crane meeting a headless horseman is fiction, many of the landmarks are located in North Tarrytown, er, ah, Sleepy Hollow.

Now, the town previously rejected the name change in 1988, but the recent closing of a General Motors automobile plant spurred the presumably greater number of unemployed citizens onward.

Irving's Wishes

Back in 1849, Irving wanted the town to change the name of the local cemetery from its then current name, Tarrytown Cemetery, to Sleepy Hollow cemetery. In fact he, wrote a letter to the editor of Knickerbocker magazine in 1849 suggesting just that:

I send you herewith a plan of a rural cemetery projected by some of the worthies of Tarrytown, on the Woody Hills adjacent to the Sleepy Hollow church. I have no pecuniary interest in it, yet I hope it may succeed, as it will keep that beautiful and umbrageous neighborhood sacred from the anti-poetical and all-leveling axe. Besides, I trust that I shall one day lay my bones there. The projectors are plain matter-of-fact men, but are already, I believe, aware of the blunder which they have committed in naming it the "Tarrytown" instead of the "Sleepy Hollow" Cemetery. The latter name would have been enough in itself to secure the patronage of all desirous of sleeping quiety in their graves.

I beg you to correct this oversight, should you, as I trust you will, notice this sepulchral enterprise.

I hope that as spring opens, you will accompany me in one of my brief visits to Sunnyside, when we will make another trip to Sleepy Hollow, and (thunder and lightning permitting) have a colloquy among the tombs.

--Yours, very truly,
Washington Irving

Irving did get his wish, although too late to notice. The cemetery name change took place in 1864--five years after he died.

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