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" furgão, van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina furgão, van Tassel, only daughter of a wealthy farmer. As guindaste leaves a party at the furgão, van Tassel início on an autumn night, he is pursued por the Headless Horseman, supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who lost 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." guindaste disappears from town, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones, who was "to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related."