The Tarrytown Home Page

History in a Nutshell….

Tarrytown is a New York village located on the east bank of the Hudson River’s Tappan Zee. Historically, it is most noted for the capture of British spy, Major John Andre, which took place in 1780 on the Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow border. The village began as a Hudson River landing and grew as a commercial center during the nineteenth century. Ceramic, hats, shoes, and wallpaper were manufactured there. Today it is home to a number of corporation headquarters. Among local places of interest are: Sunnyside—the home of Washington Irving, Lyndhurst, and the Tarrytown Music Hall.

Tarrytown

From The Place Names of Historic Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown by Henry Steiner

This name begins to appear in documents at the time of the Revolution. How it was derived, or whether it was in use long before this time, is not clear. David Williams, one of the three captors of Major André, stated towards the end of his life, “I was born in Tarrytown then called Philips’ Manor, Westchester County, New York, October 21st, 1754.” This seems to suggest that the name might have been first used some time after 1754 and before the first written instances of the name appeared in 1775. Of course, this is hardly conclusive.

M. D. Raymond gives September 2, 1775, as the date of the earliest record of the name. On this occasion it was used in recording the formation of the Tarrytown Company of the Philipsburgh militia. Captain Abraham Storms was the first captain elected to lead this company. Throughout the Revolution there were frequent recorded references to the name.

Over the years, there has been much discussion of Irving’s ironic derivation of this place name in the “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”:

This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days.

Some have actually taken the derivation seriously, disparaging Irving’s talents as a historian. Irving demonstrated his considerable abilities as a historian and a biographer throughout his career, but his derivation of the name Tarrytown is clearly a joke. It demonstrates his polished irony at its best. Yet even as satire Irving disavows it:

Be this as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic.

Lederer [The Place Names of Westchester County] writes that the derivation of the name Tarrytown is “debatable.” He prefers Tarwe dorp or “wheat town.”

As mentioned earlier, until 1870 the name Tarrytown applied to a central district or hamlet near Main Street and to an undefined area around it. The name referred to points well outside today’s village limits, including areas now in the Village of Sleepy Hollow. This distinction can be confusing, and when we speak of early times in Tarrytown, it is best to differentiate between the early hamlet and the village corporation of 1870. This point is further complicated by the fact that, at least until recently, parts of the Village of Sleepy Hollow (North Tarrytown) were still incorrectly referred to as Tarrytown.

How the hamlet of Tarrytown evolved in pre-Revolutionary times is still a mystery. One would expect to find a settlement of this type developing closer to the Upper Mills where the church and mill were already located. However that area was reserved to the colonial lord-of-the-manor Frederick Philipse III and this fact may have precluded settlement. Whatever caused the hamlet to spring up at the Tarrytown waterfront, it appears that early occupants were engaged in activities which did not require as much land as farming. Some local folk were engaged in tavern or innkeeping (the Van Tassel Tavern, the Couenhoven Inn) and others (like the Requa, Martlings and perhaps the Paulding families) were active in waterfront commerce and the operation of market boats to and from Manhattan. “Daniel Mertlings” paid one pound, five shillings per annum for his “lot,” presumably the one near the Tarrytown waterfront.

During and immediately after the Revolution, the hamlet was concentrated near the water at the foot of Main Street. Later, in the early nineteenth century, Irving remarked in one of his letters at how the hamlet had ascended the hill eastward up to the Albany Post Road.

Another question arises with respect to the “Tarrytown Lots.” Were these divisions invented upon the sale of Philipsburgh after the Revolution, or did they represent parcels already occupied by Philipsburgh tenants? The answer to this question could help us know the extent to which Tarrytown was developed at the time of the Revolution.

VAR: Tarwe-town, Tarwen Dorp, Tarwedurp, Terwe Town, Terrytown, Terry Town, Tarry-Town; Tarry Town.

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Early days in Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

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