When commuters at the R5 SEPTA teach that connects suburban Chester County to Philadelphia means Malvern station, they could spot a sq. stone monument at the proper facet in a clearing surrounded by way of a thick get up of jungle.
Above it, an indication paid for by way of the Amtrak electrical workers union and suspended from the bushes reads:
BURIAL PLOT OF IRISH RAILROAD WORKERS: At this web site, referred to as Duffy’s Short, fifty-seven Irish immigrant railroad staff from the counties of Donegal, Tyrone, Derry and Leitrim died of cholera and homicide in the summertime of 1832.
I’m a historian at Immaculata College, about one mile west of Duffy’s Short. In 2004, my colleagues and I have been those to find the cluster grave after we excavated the web site with the permission of the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Fee.
My scholars, who have been about the similar day as Duffy’s staff in 1832, equipped a splendid offer of the exertions on the excavation.
Extra just lately, in Might 2025, we found out human remainder that recommend a 2d Irish immigrant railroader cluster grave 11 miles west of Duffy’s Short, in Downingtown.
William E. Watson, CC BY-NC-SA
57 lifeless railroaders
Duffy’s Cut used to be named nearest an Irish Catholic immigrant railroad contractor named Philip Duffy, who lived from 1783-1871 and used to be most definitely from County Donegal in northwest Eire.
I discovered in regards to the web site and its conceivable cluster grave from Pennsylvania Railroad paperwork that survived in my people.
A 1909 record, categorised “History of Duffy’s Cut Stone enclosure east of Malvern, Pennsylvania, which marks the burial place of 57 track laborers who were victims of the cholera epidemic of 1832,” used to be compiled by way of date Pennsylvania Railroad president Martin W. Clement when he used to be an assistant supervisor. My grandfather, who used to be Clement’s government worker and next director of body of workers, received the record prior to the data have been auctioned off in 1972, and my brother confirmed me the record in 2002.
The Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad, the predecessor of the Pennsylvania Railroad, sought after to cut the move past from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh from 3 to 4 weeks by way of Conestoga wagon to 3 to 4 days by way of rail, canal and river.
The record my brother had in his ownership said that the lifeless railroaders at Duffy’s Short have been younger males, just lately arrived from Eire. It additionally stated the price of mile 59 used to be massively dearer than the everyday Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad mile. Laying a standard mile of P&C railroad price US$5,000 within the 1830s. However at mile 59, gouging the park with a “cut” to put the tracks on degree floor and bridging the valley with a fill – an earthen bridge – price $32,000. Even supposing the paintings used to be particularly tricky, the ordinary laborers gained about 25 cents a week.
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
Lots of the males had sailed from town of Derry within the north of Eire to Philadelphia from April to June of 1832 aboard the John Stamp. The send pulled into the Lazaretto quarantine station at the Delaware River in Essington, Pennsylvania, prior to crusing directly to Philadelphia.
No one on the John Stamp used to be reported to be unwell. This used to be the peak of the 1832 cholera epidemic that in the long run killed at least 10,000 people within the U.S.
40-seven laborers from the John Stamp send joined 10 alternative Irish immigrant staff who have been already residing with Duffy in a condominium space in Willistown, a mile south of the paintings web site.
But virtually once they arrived to the paintings camp at mile 59, so did cholera, which had unfold to Philadelphia from Untouched York Town.
Cholera within the camps
American citizens may learn in regards to the unfold of cholera throughout Europe in 1831 within the newspapers, however very negligible used to be recognized in regards to the sickness till a long time next.
Cholera is a bacterial problem that spreads because of beggarly sanitary practices wherein human feces get into drinking water, by the use of excrement handed into streams or by way of seepage from outhouses to wells.
However in 1832, public believed cholera used to be related to intemperance and vice, which have been concept to weaken the frame. Consistent with the popular miasma principle, it brought about outbreaks as soon as airborne. Immigrants and the beggarly have been considered particularly vulnerable to the sickness and primary vectors for its spread.
Cholera reasons terminating diarrhea and vomiting that supremacy to fast electrolyte loss. In 1832 it used to be wretched in about 50% of instances. Within the Delaware Valley, cholera instances fixed from July into August 1832. Philadelphia registered its top selection of instances, 173, on Aug. 6 and top selection of deaths, 76, on Aug. 7. The toughest-hit subjects within the area have been working-class neighborhoods and canal and railroad work camps.
A regular workforce on a P&C mile numbered 100 to 120 males. Then again, the paintings by way of Irish immigrants used to be segregated alongside sectarian traces at the railroads within the U.S., because it used to be within the Belfast dockyards on the similar past. The alternative part of the employees at mile 59, in line with Canal Fee studies, have been Irish Protestant immigrants who labored for an Irish Protestant contractor and did the fewer unhealthy paintings of laying tracks. They didn’t die of cholera.
William E. Watson, CC BY-NC-SA
Indicators of a bloodbath
To excavate the web site, we partnered with the Chester County Emerald Nation, a regulation enforcement team that cleared our paintings with the county district lawyer, and the coroner, in case we discovered human remainder. The College of Pennsylvania Museum equipped ground-penetrating radar, in addition to archaeological and anthropological help for the dig. Team of workers educated my scholars in how one can correctly excavate and handle artifacts and bones.
Our analysis crew exposed seven units of remainder between 2009 and 2012 within the too much japanese parts of the fill. The skeletons were buried in coffins sealed with a phenomenal selection of nails, most likely to include the cholera.
Research on the UPenn Museum confirmed proof of violence to every of the skulls – with one cranium appearing each an ax blow and a bullet encased within the cranium. Researchers discovered disagree proof of defensive wounds on any skeleton, suggesting that the boys would possibly were attach up prior to being killed.
Nearest our crew analyzed the remainder, we got here to the startling conclusion that the boys didn’t die from cholera – they have been massacred.
I consider that worry of cholera, a deadly disease that some priests in The us and England referred to as “a chastisement for the sins of the people,” and anti-immigrant sentiment fueled violence towards them by way of native-born populations.
Nearest forensic examinations of the remainder, five of the skeletons were reburied right through a rite at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd in 2012. My crew enthusiastic the identities of 2 of a dead body – 18-year-old John Ruddy from County Donegal and 29-year-old Catherine Burns, the daughter of some of the staff, from County Tyrone – and their remainder have been returned to their house counties in Eire in 2013 and 2015.
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
A 2d cluster grave in Chester County
Historic data led us to what we consider is a 2d cluster grave in Chester County.
An editorial within the Nov. 7, 1832, factor of the Village Report newspaper in West Chester reported that one guy from Duffy’s Short fled westward i’m sick the incomplete observe series to every other Irish immigrant railroader workforce “near the line of East Bradford and East Caln.”
This used to be P&C mile 48 in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. It used to be underneath the course of Irish immigrant contractor Peter Connor, whose workforce of 100 to 120 males used to be reported to have all died around the same time as Duffy’s crew.
40 years next, Charles Pennypacker’s 1909 “History of Downingtown” recorded that the lifeless Irishmen in Downingtown have been carted north to a farmland the place they have been buried in a cluster grave at the quality of present-day Northwood Cemetery, “in the eastern part of the cemetery, near the gully.”
AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File
On Might 15, 2025, the Duffy’s Short crew unearthed the first human remains from the Downingtown workforce within the actual playground reported by way of Pennypacker. This paintings has simply began.
Up and i’m sick the East Coast, there are diverse cluster graves of nameless staff who died of epidemics and overwork within the 1820s and 1830s. Maximum of the ones public won’t ever have their tales advised.
At Duffy’s Short, and now on the Downingtown web site, we are hoping to humanize one of the vital hardworking immigrants who died construction a an important a part of The us’s commercial park.
Guests can view artifacts discovered at Duffy’s Short on the Duffy’s Cut Museum within the Gabriele Library at Immaculata College in Malvern, Pa.
Learn extra of our tales about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.
