When commuters at the R5 SEPTA educate that connects suburban Chester County to Philadelphia way Malvern station, they may spot a sq. stone monument at the proper facet in a clearing surrounded by way of a thick stand of woodland.
Above it, an indication paid for by way of the Amtrak electric employees union and suspended from the bushes reads:
BURIAL PLOT OF IRISH RAILROAD WORKERS: At this web page, referred to as Duffy’s Minimize, fifty-seven Irish immigrant railroad employees 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 Minimize. In 2004, my colleagues and I have been those to find the mass grave once we excavated the web page with the permission of the Pennsylvania Ancient and Museum Fee.
My scholars, who have been about the similar age as Duffy’s employees in 1832, supplied a substantial amount of the exertions on the excavation.
Extra not too long ago, in Might 2025, we found out human stays that counsel a 2nd Irish immigrant railroader mass grave 11 miles west of Duffy’s Minimize, in Downingtown.
A SEPTA commuter educate passes Duffy’s Minimize in Malvern, Pa.
William E. Watson, CC BY-NC-SA
57 lifeless railroaders
Duffy’s Minimize used to be named after an Irish Catholic immigrant railroad contractor named Philip Duffy, who lived from 1783-1871 and used to be most probably from County Donegal in northwest Eire.
I realized concerning the web page and its imaginable mass grave from Pennsylvania Railroad paperwork that survived in my circle of relatives.
A 1909 report, classified “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 long term Pennsylvania Railroad president Martin W. Clement when he used to be an assistant manager. My grandfather, who used to be Clement’s govt assistant and later director of staff, received the report ahead of the data have been auctioned off in 1972, and my brother confirmed me the report in 2002.
The Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad, the predecessor of the Pennsylvania Railroad, sought after to shorten the go back and forth time 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 report my brother had in his ownership mentioned that the lifeless railroaders at Duffy’s Minimize have been younger males, not too long ago arrived from Eire. It additionally mentioned the price of mile 59 used to be hugely costlier than the standard Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad mile. Laying a regular mile of P&C railroad price US$5,000 within the 1830s. However at mile 59, gouging the panorama with a “cut” to put the tracks on degree floor and bridging the valley with a fill – an earthen bridge – price $32,000. Even if the paintings used to be particularly tough, the typical laborers gained about 25 cents an afternoon.
Fragment of an Irish-made clay pipe unearthed close to the Duffy’s Minimize mass grave.
AP Photograph/Matt Rourke
Many of the males had sailed from the 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, ahead of crusing directly to Philadelphia.
Nobody at the John Stamp used to be reported to be sick. This used to be the peak of the 1832 cholera epidemic that in the end killed a minimum of 10,000 other people within the U.S.
40-seven laborers from the John Stamp send joined 10 different Irish immigrant employees who have been already residing with Duffy in a condominium space in Willistown, a mile south of the paintings web page.
But nearly once they arrived to the paintings camp at mile 59, so did cholera, which had unfold to Philadelphia from New York Town.
Cholera within the camps
Cholera is a bacterial an infection that spreads because of deficient sanitary practices through which human feces get into consuming water, by the use of excrement handed into streams or by way of seepage from outhouses to wells.
However in 1832, other people believed cholera used to be related to intemperance and vice, which have been idea to weaken the frame. In line with the existing miasma concept, it brought about outbreaks as soon as airborne. Immigrants and the deficient have been considered particularly vulnerable to the illness and number one vectors for its unfold.
Cholera reasons excessive diarrhea and vomiting that result in speedy electrolyte loss. In 1832 it used to be deadly in about 50% of circumstances. Within the Delaware Valley, cholera circumstances fastened from July into August 1832. Philadelphia registered its height collection of circumstances, 173, on Aug. 6 and height collection of deaths, 76, on Aug. 7. The toughest-hit spaces within the area have been working-class neighborhoods and canal and railroad paintings camps.
A regular workforce on a P&C mile numbered 100 to 120 males. Alternatively, 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 identical time. The opposite part of the employees at mile 59, in step with Canal Fee studies, have been Irish Protestant immigrants who labored for an Irish Protestant contractor and did the fewer bad paintings of laying tracks. They didn’t die of cholera.
The writer, 2nd from left, and his crew on the dig web page at Duffy’s Minimize in 2011.
William E. Watson, CC BY-NC-SA
Indicators of a bloodbath
To excavate the web page, we partnered with the Chester County Emerald Society, a legislation enforcement workforce that cleared our paintings with the county district legal professional, and the coroner, in case we discovered human stays. The College of Pennsylvania Museum supplied ground-penetrating radar, in addition to archaeological and anthropological help for the dig. Personnel educated my scholars in how one can correctly excavate and deal with artifacts and bones.
Our analysis crew exposed seven units of stays between 2009 and 2012 in the remainder japanese parts of the fill. The skeletons were buried in coffins sealed with a phenomenal collection of nails, in all probability to include the cholera.
Research on the UPenn Museum confirmed proof of violence to each and every of the skulls – with one cranium appearing each an ax blow and a bullet encased within the cranium. Researchers discovered no proof of defensive wounds on any skeleton, suggesting that the lads may had been tied up ahead of being killed.
After our crew analyzed the stays, we got here to the startling conclusion that the lads didn’t die from cholera – they have been massacred.
I consider that concern of cholera, a virulent disease that some monks in The united states 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.
After forensic examinations of the stays, 5 of the skeletons have been reburied all the way through a rite at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd in 2012. My crew decided the identities of 2 of the deceased – 18-year-old John Ruddy from County Donegal and 29-year-old Catherine Burns, the daughter of one of the vital employees, from County Tyrone – and their stays have been returned to their house counties in Eire in 2013 and 2015.
Bishop Michael J. Fitzgerald takes phase in a funeral at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in 2012 for the 5 Nineteenth-century Irish immigrants whose stays have been excavated from the Duffy’s Minimize web page.
AP Photograph/Matt Rourke
A 2nd mass grave in Chester County
Ancient data led us to what we consider is a 2nd mass grave in Chester County.
This used to be P&C mile 48 in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. It used to be below the path of Irish immigrant contractor Peter Connor, whose workforce of 100 to 120 males used to be reported to have all died round the similar time as Duffy’s workforce.
40 years later, Charles Pennypacker’s 1909 “History of Downingtown” recorded that the lifeless Irishmen in Downingtown have been carted north to a box the place they have been buried in a mass grave at the belongings of present-day Northwood Cemetery, “in the eastern part of the cemetery, near the gully.”
Document picture from March 24, 2009, presentations bones recovered from the mass grave at Duffy’s Minimize.
AP Photograph/Matt Rourke, Document
On Might 15, 2025, the Duffy’s Minimize crew unearthed the primary human stays from the Downingtown workforce within the precise position reported by way of Pennypacker. This paintings has simply began.
Up and down the East Coast, there are a large number of mass graves of nameless employees who died of epidemics and overwork within the 1820s and 1830s. Maximum of the ones other people won’t ever have their tales informed.
At Duffy’s Minimize, and now on the Downingtown web page, we are hoping to humanize one of the crucial hardworking immigrants who died development a an important a part of The united states’s commercial panorama.
Guests can view artifacts discovered at Duffy’s Minimize on the Duffy’s Minimize Museum within the Gabriele Library at Immaculata College in Malvern, Pa.
