Washington Irving - 1783 - 1859

Washington Irving was born on April 3rd, 1783 in New York City during the final weeks of the American Revolutionary War. He was the youngest of eleven children, but despite the size, his family was by no means poor. His father, a Scot, was a wealthy merchant who insisted that all of his children be well educated. Irving's parents, therefore, expected him to gain as much education as was possible at the time, and then, once his schooling was finished, to either join the family business, or become a lawyer - both very respectable positions.

What his parents did not expect, however, was his talent for writing. Apparently, neither did Washington Irving. He did exactly what he felt was expected of him by family and friends and at age 16, became an apprentice to a law firm.

After spending two years in Europe, at the behest of his brothers, he returned home and, as a loyal son, took and passed the bar examination. He was officially a lawyer - but his heart just wasn't in it. What he really cared for was his minor writing pieces - theatre reviews, sketches of New York society and wickedly satiric portraits of businessmen and politicians.

When he was about 25 years old, he fell in love with Matilda Hoffman, the daughter of a prominent New York Judge, and shortly thereafter, asked her to marry him. However, he was well aware that a writer of minor pieces, no matter how popular, could never hope to support a family properly. It was then that he made the difficult decision to set his literary ambitions aside and reluctantly accept an offer from his fiancée's father to join his law firm.

It is entirely possible that we would have heard little, if anything from Washington Irving as a writer after that had it not been for a terrible illness that struck Matilda in 1809 and shortly thereafter, killed her. Washington was absolutely devastated. So much so, that he never married and he died a bachelor. His fiancée's death did, however free him from his obligation to Judge Hoffman, and as a result, he turned his full attention back to writing. For the next twenty-five years he shared Sunnyside - his home in Tarrytown - with his brother Ebenezer and Ebenezer's five daughters. During this period, when he traveled or was sent on diplomatic missions, he always had a home and family to whom to return.

Initially, he wrote and published his written works under pen names; one was Diedrich Knickerbocker. In 1809, he used this pen name to write A History of New York that describes and pokes fun at the lives of the early Dutch settlers of Manhattan. Eventually, Knickerbocker came to mean any person from New York, and is where the basketball team The New York Knicks got its name.

In 1819, he published the short stories, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow under the pen name of Geoffery Crayon, Gent. in The Sketchbook.

On November 28, 1859, shortly before the beginning of the Civil War, Washington Irving died at Sunnyside, surrounded by his family. He is buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.