There are sufficient reasons for believing that the house was not built until many years later. Irving always inclined to the opinion that Tarrytown was settled previously to 1650, and he even concluded that some of the graves in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery went back to that year. But Irving was entirely unacquainted with the early chronology of Westchester County. His historical studies, confined mostly to the immediate purposes of his own profitable writings on subjects of universal interest, did not descend to such local minutiae. His published writings having reference to Tarrytown and vicinity are exclusively of the " quaint " variety. In 1835 Bolton had not yet begun his indefatigable researches into the early history of Westchester County; and indeed Irving, cogitating about the probable antiquity of his acquisition, must have had no other means of calculation than that of tradition, assisted by his gentle imagination. The

original Wolfert Acker (the supposed builder of the house, and the first known Acker in this county) was certainly not a resident of Philipseburgh Manor until about 1680. This Wolfert Acker (or Ecker) was married March 4, 1680, to Maritje Sibouts. The record of the marriage, preserved in the register of the old Dutch Church of New York, describes him as " a young man of Midwout " [Long Island], and adds that both he and his spouse were at the time " on Frederick Philips land," and were •' married on Frederick Philips land." (See Raymond's " Souvenir of the RevolutionarySoldiers' Monument Dedication at Tarrytown." p. 101.) This is conclusive evidence that Acker could not have built the house at the period conjectured by Irving. Manifestly Irving's Sunnyside inscription belongs to the all too numerous list of ill-authenticated graven historical remembrancers in Westchester County. - ii., 235-241.