A Headless Hessian in Sleepy Hollow

In one form or another, most of us have heard Washington Irving’s short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. This terrifying tale is known as America’s first Ghost Story. If you haven’t read the tale of a headless horseman who pursues poor Ichabod Crane on a gloomy night, you may have seen a movie or even the Disney Cartoon. But an important detail sometimes slips past the reader or viewer… it was a Headless HESSIAN in Sleepy Hollow. That’s right, the boogeyman who carried his head on the pommel of his saddle and bashed Ichabod with a pumpkin came from Germany.

So, let’s learn more about the Headless Horseman, the Hessian “mercenaries” who fought in the Revolutionary War, and Washington Irving.

In Sleepy Hollow, near Tarrytown, New York, a schoolteacher named Ichabod Crane hears supernatural and ghostly tales while visiting the local Dutch farmers. One of the more frightening is the Tale of the Headless Horseman!  According to legend, the Headless Horseman came to the American colonies as a Hessian soldier during the Revolutionary War. He lost his head to a cannonball during the Battle of White Plains against Washington’s army. Now, the Headless Hessian in Sleepy Hollow rides the countryside by night, reenacting the battle with his head mounted on the pommel of his saddle before returning to the graveyard at daybreak.

Ichabod has a wild crush on Katharina Von Tassel and fantasizes about having her on his arm and enjoying the riches and food on the Van Tassel farm. He’s invited to a gathering at the farm and borrows a horse named Gunpowder to take him there. At the party, he eats and dances but also gets involved in the sharing of ghost stories. Then, he makes a play for Katharina but is rebuffed.

On the dark, slow ride home, a sad Ichabod rolls those ghost stories around in his head, getting more and more spooked by the noises of the night. Then, a strangely shaped horseman appears. Ichabod encourages Gunpowder to pick up the pace, but the horseman keeps up. When Ichabod takes a closer look, he sees the rider has no head! He kicks Gunpowder into a run, but the headless horseman keeps up. They get to the bridge, which, according to local legend, the horseman can’t cross. When he reaches the other side, Ichabod looks back just in time to see the head being launched at him. It knocks him to the ground.

The next morning, all that remains is Ichabod’s hat and a smashed pumpkin…

A good folk story or ghost story always contains just enough “real” details to make the fantastical seem plausible.

Sleepy Hollow IS a real place. However, it was officially called North Tarrytown until recently.  And the Battle of White Plains did take place only ten miles away. And those Hessian soldiers? Because of their skill and bloodthirsty reputation on the battlefield, people remembered them with fear. And there is a story that American Major General William Heath wrote of an incident in the November 1, 1776 battle, when “a shot from the American cannon at this place took off the head of a Hessian artilleryman.” (The day after Halloween!!)

But why were Hessians fighting in the Revolutionary War?

(First…A very long history lesson cut VERY short. During the French and Indian War, Great Britain went heavily into debt and taxed the American colonists to pay it off. The American colonists grew increasingly frustrated by the lack of representation and increased taxation, so acts of rebellion and skirmishes broke out. The colonists finally declared independence from Great Britain. The crown was not amused, and we had a Revolutionary War)

Great Britain maintained soldiers in the American colonies, and while that may have been enough to quell a local issue, it wasn’t enough to fight an entire war. (In fact, these soldiers needed quartering with the colonists, which is why we have the Bill of Rights Amendment 3.) And Great Britain’s population really wasn’t large enough to raise a large army to send to the colonies. Fortunately, there was a solution: Hessian Soldiers.

Modern Germany wasn’t established until 1871. Before this, the land of German-speaking people was called the Holy Roman Empire. All or some parts of the HRE were at war a LOT (just starting in the 1500s, there was the Italian War, the Schmalkaldic Wars, the Peasant War, the Thirty Years’ War, the Franco-Prussian War, the War of Polish Succession, the Silesian Wars, etc… you get the idea).  Some of the principalities under the HRE got really good at fighting. So good, in fact, that it became quite lucrative to hire out soldiers or auxiliaries (legally, the term is auxiliary, not mercenary) to other countries who needed a hand.

Hesse-Kassel may have been a small state, but its leaders quickly realized they could make money by hiring out soldiers. Their soldiers were incredibly well disciplined, and very good at their job. The men went to war in their own uniforms, under their own banner, incentivized by good pay and an exemption from taxes. And, as soldiers, they were a step up the ladder from mere peasants, making it a (relatively) decent job.

George III hired approximately 30,000 of these Hessian soldiers to fight under the leadership of Wilhelm von Knyphausen, primarily in the northern colonies. These fierce warriors made up about 1/3 of the British forces and helped them gain the upper hand in early battles, but then Prussian-born Baron von Steuben trained the Americans and turned the tide of the war.

During and after the war, German-Americans tried to convince the Hessians to stay in America, and around 5000- 6000 did. They settled mostly in the Mid-Atlantic states and in Canada. (7500, about 1/4 of the Hessian soldiers died during the Revolutionary war, most from disease).

Washington Irving’s family came from Scotland and England, and he grew up in Manhattan (a former Dutch colony). At age 6, his parents introduced him to George Washington, his namesake, whom they greatly admired. His short stories, essays, and historical works make him one of the most important early American writers.

Although he is not German, I’ve encountered his name several times while researching Germans in America.

We can thank Irving for his 1809 A History of New York, for making St. Nicholas a part of American Christmas, and for turning Christmas into something for children and not just a day of drinking. In England, people celebrated the 12 Days of Christmas with feasting, drinking, and gambling. The Puritans despised this tradition and originally outlawed Christmas debauchery in the colonies, but finally gave in and allowed the English to carry on. Only the Pennsylvania Dutch celebrated the holiday in a way we would find familiar. Although Irving added a Santa Claus twist by writing, “good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees, in that self-same wagon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children,” dropping them down the chimney, we now celebrate in a style somewhat familiar to Germans.

His short story, Rip Van Winkel, appears in the collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Published in 1819-1820 (which also contains four stories about Christmas, and more importantly, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow), it retells Johann Karl Christoph Nachtigal’s story, “Der Ziegenhirt” (‘The Goatherd’), aka. “Peter Klaus” is about a Goatherd who drinks some wine and falls asleep for 20 years… waking up with a very long beard. You can read it here

And of course, the Headless Hessian in Sleepy Hollow, the ultimate boogeyman, may have been influenced by the German poem The Wild Huntsman by Gottfried Bürger. The Wild Hunt legend always involves the supernatural chasing unsuspecting peasants and hunters. It’s easy to see how the ghostly Hessian and Ichabod Crane could be another chapter in that legendary tale.

As a child, Washington Irving visited Tarrytown to escape the Yellow Fever epidemic in Manhattan. There he got to know the area and the graveyard. Later in life, he said he wrote the stories based on the people he met there. Irving lived out his final years in Tarrytown and is buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

These stories remind us that German influences in America’s formation were quite strong. The legends brought by German immigrants, and their role in the foundation of this country, are deeply woven into American literature and culture.