In the year following the death of John Anderson, 1881, there was a glut of estate properties on the market in Irvington, Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown. It would be a few years before brothers William and John Rockefeller would move into this area and buy many of these estates.

The New York Times ascribed the trend of New York's upper class away from Hudson River estates to a new interest in the seashore residences. Newport and other destinations began to win favor over the now fairly industrialized Hudson Valley. Improvements in rail and steamship travel made remote seaside resorts more conveniently accessible. The United States was also experiencing the "Long Depression" which had begun with the Panic of 1873.

The Ambrose Kingsland Estate would soon make way for new residential developments like Philipse Manor. In Tarrytown's Wilson Park, virtually every estate was offered for sale. In today's Webber Park, the Anderson's mansion's steel shutters were drawn, a caretaker had charge of the property, and a "for sale" sign was prominently displayed. Anderson had called the place "the Villa," though some maps of the estate labeled it "Sleepy Hollow Park."

John Anderson died on a trip to Paris about two years before the Sleepy Hollow Lighthouse was erected. His death from pneumonia was unexpected. The estate of the tobacconist was estimated at seven to ten million dollars, a very handsome fortune in that day. His plan for the trip was to spend the winter in Europe with his second wife, Kate, and visit once more with his friend, Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian national hero.

Anderson's family and close friends had long known of his trouble with "spirits" when he embarked on his European trip, and this fact was to fuel controversy over the deceased millionaire's estate. It seems the businessman was in the habit of talking and listening to the spirits of (the still living) Garibaldi, the spirit of Willie (Anderson's dead son), and Mary Rogers - an employee who had died mysteriously forty years earlier. According to one Anderson associate, it was Mary's spirit that gave him the most trouble.

Born in New York City in 1812, John Anderson first apprenticed as a wool-puller and then a bricklayer. By his mid-twenties, he had saved enough to begin his own small tobacco business in Lower Manhattan. He began at 319 Broadway, near Reade Street, and close to the old City Hospital.

The business, John Anderson & Company, later moved to Broadway and Pine Street. The young man's tobacco business attracted New York's leading literati, journalists and politicians, but it was also frequented by a less respectable group of roughnecks whose patronage he would have preferred to discourage.

In 1837, Edgar Allan Poe came to New York from Richmond, entering the literary and publishing life of New York, and becoming a customer of Anderson's shop. That same year, Mary Rogers and her mother, Phoebe, came to New York from Connecticut and moved in with Anderson and his wife for a while at their home on Duane Street, not far from his shop. By 1838, Mary began to work at Anderson's shop, and she and her mother moved to a boarding house on nearby Nassau Street which Phoebe ran.

Mary was an attractive seventeen or eighteen-year-old and Anderson may not have been at all surprised when her presence behind the counter precipitated an upswing in business. She apparently caused a small sensation among the writers and journalists of the district; she was noticed and noted in the scribblings of the day. As one modern commentator put it, "she was famous for being talked about."

Mary went mysteriously missing on October 4, 1838. Without notice she dropped from sight, stirring up all kinds of speculations - even in newsprint. Yet, a few days later, she resurfaced with nary a word from her about her disappearance. Three years later, on July 25, 1841, Mary was missing again. This time her body was found two weeks afterward floating in the Hudson River off Weehawken, New Jersey; the young woman was the apparent victim of a violent rape and murder. The authorities had no leads. Her death became a sensation and every newspaper picked up the theme.

John Anderson offered $50 toward an advertised $500 reward, yet no one stepped forward with information. Anderson and several other men were arrested for questioning and then released. The reward was soon increased to $1250. The only suspects seemed to be Anderson, a fiancé, an ex-fiancé, and a sailor. As time went on, more evidence was found near the crime scene and new theories formulated. Mary's clothes were found scattered in the woods not far from where her body was found, and other evidence suggested her death was the work of a drunken gang of ruffians. Her fiancé, apparently distraught, committed suicide near the crime scene and left an ambiguous suicide note. Anderson himself may have been burdened by the lack of resolution in the case, and he may have been worried about suspicions cast in his direction, as well as their effect on his business and reputation.

It is not certain, but it has been strongly suggested, that Anderson himself encouraged Edgar Allan Poe to write the "Mystery of Marie Roget" in which the thinly disguised character of Marie's employer is ruled out as a suspect. Poe wrote the documentary-story in early 1842, and the piece began to appear serially at the end of that year. Shortly thereafter, Anderson began to advertise in Poe's new startup publication, the Broadway Journal. Shortly after Poe's story began to run, there was a significant new development in the case of Mary Rogers. A mortally wounded woman who kept an inn near the crime scene confessed in her deathbed delirium that Mary was the victim of a botched abortion that was made to look like a murder.

This seemed to settle the murder case, but it did not entirely clear Anderson from complicity in Mary's condition or her attempted abortion. Mary had gotten along well with Anderson's wife, and there appears to have been a breakdown of relations in Anderson's marriage due to Mrs. Anderson's attachment of blame to her husband - feelings she was prone to discuss with others. The shadow that followed John Anderson would keep him out of politics, though he was said to have the makings of a successful mayoral candidate and strong ties with Tammany boss, soon to be mayor, Fernando Wood.

But Anderson would find success in business. At the time of the Mexican War in the late 1840s, the patronage of U. S. Commanding General Winfield Scott was to make Anderson's fine-cut chewing tobacco - "Solace" - a national favorite. The tobacconist was an innovator in marketing and packaging as well as a meticulous manager. Customers of John Anderson & Company were greeted by a statue of Sir Walter Raleigh as they entered the shop. Later, at the advent of the Civil War, John Anderson & Company sent shipments of tobacco to the Union troops besieged at Fort Sumter.

He was extremely focused and astute in his real estate and stock investments as well. Anderson was to buy a large building at 114 Liberty Street that became the company's headquarters, and he later bought a large lot adjacent to where the Plaza Hotel would be built. In 1852, he took a one-twelfth stake in the Broadway and Seventh Avenue Railroad Line which also turned to gold.

He met Garibaldi when the Italian independence leader lived in exile in New York in the early 1850s and became his friend and supporter. By the end of the 1850s, he had purchased his Sleepy Hollow Estate. The estate included all of Webber Park west of New Broadway, Douglas Park, and the block on the east side of New Broadway from Pine Street to Maple Street.

It is not clear what became of Anderson's first wife, but he certainly became unhappy with her and made disparaging remarks about her and her alleged class inferiority. The marriage ended and he eventually remarried. Three children, two daughters and one son, would survive him.

By the late 1860s, Anderson would occasionally act strangely and paranoid. He might jump or skip unpredictably and was said to take exception to a female servant due to the red color of her hair, and to female servants in general. In 1870 he appeared to have the delusion that his dead son, Willie, was living with him in Sleepy Hollow. As time went on, he lamented to friends and associates that he received increasing frequent visitations from the spirit of Mary Rogers.

In 1873, he became a friend and supporter of renowned naturalist Louis Agassiz, giving him $50,000 to found a school and laboratory on an island in Buzzard's Bay. Agassiz argued against the findings of Darwin and he died later in that year leaving the project to gradually unravel. A short time later, some of his students were to found the marine biological laboratory at nearby Woods Hole.

In 1876, Anderson's relatives were alarmed when he showed up at the Astor House in Manhattan without his hat, coat, and shoes. On that day he claimed that his son-in-law, Judge Barnard, was trying to poison his drink and also trying to have him committed. Soon he reported more visits from his son's spirit and from that of the still-living Garibaldi.

As the centennial of Major John Andre's capture approached in 1880, Anderson signed on to donate the bronze statue of hero John Paulding that was to be added to the original monument, a generous civic gesture. The familiar statue at Patriots' Park on the border of Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown is possibly Anderson's most visible legacy. It has often been observed that the name John Anderson was Andre's alias when he was captured as a spy.

Anderson made donations to Saint Theresa's Church in Sleepy Hollow, including the forgiveness of a debt that appears in his will. He donated the lot for Saint Paul's Methodist Church, which once stood at the northcorner of Broadway and New Broadway.

In the summer before he left for Europe he was particularly beset with spirit visitations and complaining to a friend that he wished he could clear away the products of his brain by shooting himself in the head. In Paris he saw friends, did business, and saw doctors about his health and his dental problems. He died at the age of sixty-nine on November 26, 1881.

His widow arrived in New York with her husband's remains on New Year's Eve. The funeral services were held at Trinity Church and the remains were interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Brooklyn. The Sleepy Hollow estate was soon to be bought by one of Anderson's executors, John Webber, and the heirs began a protracted, public fight over Anderson's fortune.

Henry Steiner is the village historian of Sleepy Hollow and the managing broker of Steiner Real Estate Associates; henry@SteinerRealEstateAssociates.com