Sleepy Hollow

Daniel Van Tassel Gives the Results of His Investigations of Many Years.

To the Editor of the New York Times:

-May 28, 1898-

I have read with much interest the letters which have appeared from time to time in the TIMES'S SATURDAY REVIEW concerning Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow and write under the belief that I can straighten some of the crooked ways of the controversy, and correct a few ancient errors.

. . . Before, during, and after the Revolution there resided in the upper part of Sleepy Hollow an Abraham Van Tassel, the younger brother of John Van Tassel, my great-grandfather. He was tall, spare, and large boned. To distinguish him from others of the same name then residing hereabout, he was called "Brom Bones." Prof. Bashford, Dean of Columbia College has an original Revolutionary muster roll of Capt. Gabriel Requa's company. This name appears upon the list, "Abraham Van Tassel (Bones.") With this parenthetical word added there could be no mistaking the person meant. Abraham Van Tassel was a man of gentle disposition, with a decidedly religious turn. While his pugnacious brother John fought in the French war and afterward from start to finish in the Revoluton, Abraham never left the Hollow. He quietly cultivated his fields, reared a moderately large family, and regularly of a Sunday attended the services held at the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, of which he was a member, and for some years its voorleser (leader in singing and reading.) A quiet, exemplary citizen, who closed his eyes for the last time in the Spring of 1826.