Sexton & Gravedigger

The Old Dutch Church has kept the valley's dead since 1685, and the sexton keeps the ground they lie in. You are sole custodian of the church and its burying-ground by the bridge.

The work

• Ring for services and toll for the dead.
• Dig and close the graves, in every season, including a valley winter.
• Trim the lamps and keep the church in order for services and feast days.
• Keep the yard, the wall, and the gate by the bridge.

Context

• Reports to the dominie weekly.
• Sole custodian: there is no second sexton and no relief.
• Pay is £18–24 New York currency per annum (~$45–60 in silver dollars), with the sexton's cottage.
• In-person and on call: the dead do not reschedule, and neither does the bell.
• The burying-ground has a reputation. It is earned, and it is part of the post.

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

• Steady nerves after dark, in that particular churchyard.
• A strong back for winter digging.
• Reliable as the bell itself — the dead do not reschedule.

Not a fit if you would want company on the grounds after dark, or a night when the bell cannot call you out.

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.