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Updated: June 14, 2025
Diedrich and Gretchen were the first persons united according to the Protestant form in Brill, after its capture, and their descendants have ever been among its most respected inhabitants. Niagara, the father of waters! The name is significant of something grand; words are inadequate to describe the mighty cataract.
The fear of tiring my readers, who may not take such an interest as myself in these heroic themes, induces me to close here my extracts from this precious chronicle of the venerable Diedrich.
I have thus endeavored to give an idea of Sleepy Hollow and its church, as I recollect them to have been in the days of my boyhood. It was in my stripling days, when a few years had passed over my head, that I revisited them, in company with the venerable Diedrich. I shall never forget the antiquarian reverence with which that sage and excellent man contemplated the church.
I allude, Sir, to the ancient and renowned village of Communipaw, which, according to the veracious Diedrich, and to equally veracious tradition, was the first spot where our ever-to-be-lamented Dutch progenitors planted their standard and cast the seeds of empire, and from whence subsequently sailed the memorable expedition under Oloffe the Dreamer, which landed on the opposite island of Manhatta, and founded the present city of New-York, the city of dreams and speculations.
Even now I have it on the point of my pen to relate how his crew were most horribly frightened, on going on shore above the Highlands, by a gang of merry roistering devils, frisking and curveting on a flat rock, which projected into the river, and which is called the Duyvel's Dans-Kamer to this very day. But no! Diedrich Knickerbocker, it becomes thee not to idle thus in thy historic wayfaring.
Foremost among these active helpers were Jacob van Wesenbeke, Diedrich Sonoy and Paul Buys; and the chief scene of their operations were the provinces of Holland and Zeeland, already distinguished for their zeal in the cause of freedom. The amount of cash that was raised was, however, for some time very small.
They were required to take an oath of fidelity to the King of Spain, and to the Prince of Orange as his stadholder; to promise resistance to the Duke of Alva, the tenth penny, and the inquisition; to support every man's freedom and the welfare of the country; to protect widows, orphans, and miserable persons, and to maintain justice and truth. Diedrich Sonoy arrived on the 2nd June at Enkbuizen.
If the Dutchman had conquered Boston, it would have been a misfortune to this land, and to the world. It would have been like Diedrich Knickerbocker wrestling with an electric battery. But when the Yankee conquered New York, his union with the Dutch formed those sterling elements which have made the Republic what it is.
He had in his hand a small bundle tied in a red bandana handkerchief: he appeared to be traveling northward, and was very much fatigued and exhausted. From the same, November 16, 1809. SIR, You have been good enough to publish in your paper a paragraph about Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker, who was missing so strangely some time since.
The Dutch are not funny anywhere but in Seventeenth Century Manhattan; nor can this singularity be explained by saying that Washington Irving made them so. It inheres in the situation; and the delightful chronicles of Diedrich Knickerbocker owe half their enduring fascination to their sterling veracity the veracity which is faithful to the spirit and gambols only with the letter.
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