TARRYTOWN, a village of Westchester county, New York, U.S.A., on the east bank of the Hudson river, 25 m. N. of New York city, opposite Nyack; served by the New York Central railroad, interurban trolleys, motor-bus lines, river steamers and ferry to Nyack. Pop. 193o, 6,841 Federal census. North Tarry town and Irvington, separately incorporated villages of 7,013 and 3,296 inhabitants respectively (1925), adjoin it on the north and south, and are practically part of the same community. Tarry town rises above the river (here expanded into Tappan Zee) to a considerable height. The main street (Broadway) is a section of the King's highway laid out in 1723 from New York to Albany, later called the Albany Post road. Washington Irving's home "Sunnyside" still stands in the village, and in North Tarrytown are the Philipse manorhouse (built in 1682, partly of brick brought from Holland) and mill (i682) and the old Dutch church (1685). In Sleepy Hollow cemetery, adjoining the church, are some Revolutionary earthworks, and the graves of Washington Irving, Carl Schurz and Robert G. Ingersoll. Among the large modern estates in the environs are those of John D. Rockefeller
and Mrs. Finley Shepard (Helen M. Gould). The village has several manufacturing industries and there are large nurseries and market-gardens in the vicinity. It is the seat of several private schools. Tarrytown stands on the site of an Indian village, burned by the Dutch in 1644. Settlement by the whites began in and there were about a dozen Dutch families living here in 168o, when Frederick Philipse acquired title to several thousand acres and built the manorhouse, mill and church mentioned above.
During the Revolution Tarrytown was in the "Neutral Territory" between the British and the Continental lines, and was the scene of numerous skirmishes between the "cowboys" and "skinners," unorganized partisans of the Colonies and the king respectively. On the Albany Post road, at a point now marked by a monument, Maj. John Andre was captured on Sept. 24, 1780. Tarrytown was incorporated as a village in 1870, Irvington in 1870 and North Tarrytown in 1875. The name is probably a corruption of the Dutch Tarwen Dorp (wheat town).