Bell-Ringer

The church bell is the valley's clock and its news service. You ring it: for services, for weddings, and to toll the dead, at whatever hour the news arrives.

The work

• Ring for services and weddings on the fixed calendar.
• Toll the valley's dead whenever word comes.
• Keep the rope, wheel, and louvres in working order.

Context

• Reports to the sexton.
• First duty is at dawn; the last comes whenever the news does.
• Pay is £6–10 New York currency per annum (~$15–25 in silver dollars); most holders keep other work besides.
• In-person and on call — you must live near enough to answer a summons at any hour.

Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.

• Stout arms.
• Lives near enough to answer a summons at any hour.

Not a fit if you live beyond the hollow, or sleep through a knock at the door.

The whitewashed stone church beside the burying-ground, serving the valley's souls since 1685 — the longest-tenured employer in the hollow.

Who we are

A small permanent staff — sexton, chorister, bell-ringer — under the dominie, funded by a congregation that has never once paid late. Generations-deep job security: our posts turn over by mortality, not by dismissal.

How we work

Quietly, on a fixed calendar of services, feast days, weddings, and funerals, with the bell as the schedule everyone in the valley works to. The churchyard's one restless former cavalryman is, we maintain, a tenant and not staff.

Who thrives here

Steady, sober, reliable people who are untroubled by that particular churchyard after dark, and who understand that the dead do not reschedule.

Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.