@doffue-martling
Doffue Martling
Yeoman farmer by day. By the tavern fire, the hollow's standing authority on every haunting it has.
Experience
A large blue-bearded Dutchman of the hollow: farmer by day, and the tavern's standing authority on every haunting between the church and Wiley's Swamp.
Martling Farm (Sleepy Hollow, NY)
Yeoman Farmer — 1780–present
Run a middling mixed holding — grain, hogs, and an orchard that pays for itself in cider — at a steady profit for nineteen years. Nearly took a British galley in '81 with a nine-pounder from a mud breastwork; the gun burst, but the story holds and has never once failed to hold a room.
The Headless Horseman Tavern (Sleepy Hollow, NY)
Fireside Correspondent (unofficial) — 1785–present
Collect, verify (loosely), and distribute the valley's ghost intelligence, and debate all comers on matters of hauntings — undefeated on home ground.
Skills and tools
Mixed farming, hog-raising, and cider orcharding, plus ghost lore catalogued, cross-referenced, and improved in the telling. Tavern debate, at length.
Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.