Ichabod Crane

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Ichabod Crane is a fictional character and the protagonist in Washington Irving's short story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", first published in 1820. Ichabod comes from the biblical name of the grandson of Eli the High Priest and son of Phinehas. Irving might have borrowed the name from that of Ichabod B. Crane, a colonel in the US Army during the War of 1812 whom he had met in 1814 in Sackets Harbor, New York.

According to a notation by Irving, the character of Ichabod Crane was based on a schoolteacher named Jesse Merwin, whom Irving befriended in Kinderhook, New York, in 1809. According to an 1894 article in The New York Times, "it [was] claimed by many that Samuel Youngs was the original from whom Irving drew his character of Ichabod Crane"