Many of his poems were written while musing by the side of the Bronx. His career was cut short by consumption at the early age of twenty-five. He died on the 21st of September, 1820. His grave and the simple monument which marks it long ago fell into extreme neglect. In the present march of city improvements in the Borough of the Bronx the plans adopted for street extensions involve the complete extinction of the old graveyard. Efforts have been made by the Society of American Authors to preserve the spot where Drake lies buried and to have a substantial monument raised upon it.

HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

The residence of Washington Irving at Sunnyside began in the year 183G. Irving was born in New York City, April 3, 1783. He " first came to Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow when a lad ot fourteen or fifteen. He spent some of his holidays here, and formed an attachment for the spot which never left him." At frequent intervals in his literary career he visited Tarrytown, sometimes as a guest of his nephew, Oscar Irving. In a letter to his sister in 1832 he wrote: 11 I am more and more in the notion of having that, little cottage below Oscar's house, and wish you to tell him to endeavor to get it for me." This cottage was a small stone Dutch dwelling, the identical "Wolfert's Roost" of his well-known sketch, built in early times by a member of the Acker family, and at the period of the Revolution occupied by Jacob Van Tassel as a tenant of Frederick Philipse. Irving purchased it, with about fifteen acres of land, in June, 1835. During that year and 1836 he had extensive alterations made, giving the name of Sunnyside to the place as then remodeled.