Q. At the Springville Cemetery on Richmond Avenue on Staten Island there is a military marker on the grave of Ichabod Crane. During 60 years of visits to my own family’s grave site there, I was frequently told that while Ichabod Crane was a fictional character, this Col. Ichabod Crane was a friend of Washington Irving and he named his famous character after him. True?

A. Col. Ichabod B. Crane definitely existed, and was a contemporary of Washington Irving’s, but unlike the spindly bookish schoolteacher in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which Irving published in 1820, this Ichabod Crane did not run away.

“He was a real person,” Dr. Thomas W. Matteo, Staten Island’s borough historian, said in an email, noting that Crane served under Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins during the War of 1812 as an aide-de-camp along with Washington Irving. “He lived on Victory Boulevard in the Travis section of Staten Island,” Dr. Matteo added. “His house has since been demolished. As far as Washington Irving’s using his name, it’s probably true but I do not think he asked Ichabod’s permission.”

In a 2002 article in The New York Times, Peter J. Malia gave some more information about Ichabod B. Crane. He was the son of Gen. William Crane of Elizabethtown, N.J., now Elizabeth. Born in 1787, he enlisted in the Marines in 1809. After two years aboard the 44-gun frigate United States under Commodore Stephen Decatur, Crane saw action in Canada before going to Fort Pike, in Sackets Harbor on Lake Ontario, where he was responsible for overseeing the harbor’s defenses. Crane went on to serve in the Black Hawk and Mexican Wars, and was in military service for 45 years. He died at his home in Point Richmond on Staten Island, in 1857.