@hans-van-ripper
Hans Van Ripper
Thrifty tenant farmer and reluctant landlord. Keeper of Gunpowder; lender of nothing twice.
Experience
A choleric old Dutch farmer of close and careful habits; boards the village schoolmaster with much grumbling, and lends out horses with more.
Van Ripper Homestead (Sleepy Hollow, NY)
Owner-Operator — 1775–present
Farm stony upland acres at a profit through thrift alone, twenty-four years running, with no debt and no waste worth the name. Board the district schoolmaster — meals, lodging, and opinions included — and maintain Gunpowder, a broken-winded plough-horse, in working order well past all reasonable expectation.
Skills and tools
Ploughing, fence-mending, and horse-keeping on a shoestring, with cost control that borders on the miraculous. Grumbling: fluent; conversational in muttering.
Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.