The story is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a lanky schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham "Brom Bones" van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina van Tassel, only daughter of a wealthy farmer. As máy trục, cần cẩu leaves a party at the van Tassel trang chủ on an autumn night, he is pursued bởi the Headless Horseman, supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who Mất tích his head to a cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head." máy trục, cần cẩu disappears from town, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones, who was "to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related."