Katrina Van Tassel's Age

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In the film, we are shown a close-up of the Van Tassel family tree within their Bible.
Katrina's name and year of birth can easily be found among the highest branches, which state she was born in 1781, making her 18 - as the film is set in 1799. However, if you pay attention to the actual story, the date conflicts with the given facts, making the date shown on the family tree an odd oversight. An oversight perhaps intentionally added by Burton to make Katrina all the more innocent.
 
From Fangoria Magazine, #188:
Once Depp signed on, finding the right actress to play Ichabod's paramour, Katrina Van Tassel, became that much easier. "We knew we could go with a really young Katrina, which was something Tim wanted," Schroeder explains. "He wanted the innocence."
 
Katrina is 18 in the Washington Irving novel, but I hardly see where that small detail is worth including when so many others were altered. 

In the film, The Art of Sleepy Hollow, and the novelization, Baltus Van Tassel relays that it was during the winter of 1779 that the Hessian Horseman met his death.
In The Art of Sleepy Hollow and the film novelization, a scene absent from the finished film, though present in the trailer, has Katrina delivering the Van Tassel family Bible to Ichabod at his request. Crane is described as opening the pages of the Bible to study, discovering that Katrina was born in 1777. There is also an alternative drawing of the Van Tassel family tree in the background of The Art of Sleepy Hollow (page 33), which lists Katrina's birth year as 1777.
 
Further on in the film, Lady Van Tassel/Mary Archer reveals she was a witness to the Hessians' death twenty years prior. She also cites her reason for seeking revenge at the time:

LADY VAN TASSEL:
Against Van Garrett, who evicted my family, against Baltus Van Tassel who, with simpering wife and girlchild, stole our home. I swore I would make myself mistress of all they had.

It is therefore clear that Katrina could not have been born in 1781 to have been known and hated by the young Mary Archer in 1779.

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