Duffy's Cut : Pennsylvania Ghost Story Leads to A Murder Mystery

Researchers work (Aug. 2) at the site of a mass grave for immigrant  Irish railroed workers in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

Janet Monge, an Authropologist from the University of Pennsylvania  examines bones and items taken from the Duffy's Cut mass grave.

  
A human skull with a hole in  it was discovered at Duffy's Cut mass grave.

(August 25 ) - Anthropologists and historians in Philadelphia's suburban Main Line are unearthing  a mass grave  containing the remains of dozens of Irish workers who died nearly two centueies ago. The find, called TheDuffy's cut Project  started out as an investigation into local folklore and ghost stories . It has since  transformed not only into a significant historical find but als , perhaps, one  of the oldest murder mysteries in the Keystone  State.
" All the remains, so far, indicate  [ the men ] were brutally murdered ,"  said William Watson , head of the history department of Immaculata University in Immaculata , PA. "Some of them were just bludgeoned to death. It's unbelievable,"  Watson said.
"Duffy's Cut ," as it's known, is a stretch of rail line  in Malvern, Pa. 30 miles west of Philadelphia . It was constructed for the Philadelphia  and Columbia  Railroad in 1832. Much of the construction  was  completed by a group of 57 Irish immigrants from Donegal, Tyrone and Derry, Ireland, who arrived in  June 1832 aboard the ship John Stamp.
"They came here to partake of the American dream," Watson said. "No doubt, they thought they were going to get some good work, and they were hired right off the docks by a fellow Irishman named Philip Duffy, who came in around the War of 1812. He basically brought them out here to complete the most expensive and difficult mile in the entire Philadelphia and Columbia system."

Within eight weeks of their arrival, all 57 reportedly died during a cholera pandemic. The dead were buried together in a mass grave along Duffy's Cut. The fate of the men who lost their lives were all but forgotten by  the time Watson  and his twin brothe , the Rev. Frank Watson were born. By then, the story  of the men's deaths had transformed into  more of a local legend.
The Watsons' grandfather had worked for the Pennsylvania  Railroad and was knowledgeable about the tales.  His ghost stories included an account of a man who, in the years following the incident, claimed he was walking along the tracks when he saw  ghosts dancing on top of the Irish workers graves.
Following the death of their grandfather, the brothers inherited a box of old railroad files. When they were going through them together in 1992 , they found documents from 1909  that contained contextual evidence of the deaths  and the approximate location of the mass grave.
"It was  one of those things that had to be investigated ," Watson said. "We started looking to see if there was any reality behind the dimly remembered stuff , so we began looking into Pennsylvania  archives and fleshed  it out even further."

By 2004, the Watson twins had assembled  enough documented evidence  of the deaths to have a historical marker placed on the site.
" Nearby is the mass grave of 57 Irish workers who died in August, 1832, of cholera," the marker reads."They had  recently arrived in the United States and were employed by a construction  contracter named Duffy ... Prejudice against Irish Catholics contributed to the denial of care to the workers. Their illness and death typified the hazards faced by many 19-century immigrant industrial workers."

In 2007, geophysicist Timothy Bechtel  agreed to help . He brought with him a sophisticated  ground penetrating radarsystem, which literally allowed the team to X-ray the soil in surrounding area.
"[Bechtel] found something in 2008," Watson said.  "Bechtel said you guys should dig here and in March 2009, we were able to find the  first set of [humans] remains  very precisely , [thanks to] his science]."
Janet Monge , an anthropologist from the University of Pennsylvania , has identified four human skulls and bones from seven skeletons. Those skeletons , however , suggest something other than a cholera pandemic may have claimed the men's lives. "Skeleton number 6 looks like it has a bullet hole in it, and we  have very good indications of blunt-force trauma to the others,"Said Monge.

As a result of the brothers' research and the evidence  found upon the skeletal remains , the Watsons suspect local vigilantes killed most of the workers.
"The fact is , they were murdered," Watson said. "In the first layer of burials , we suspect most of the men are going to be victims of cholera , which leaves no physical traces. But we believed others were killed to make sure there would be no cholera getting out of that valley."
"We have a cemetery to take them to, which is really perfect because where they are now is essentially a dumping ground," Watson said. "It is West Laurel  Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, just outside of  where the Victorian elite  of Philadelphia  are buried.
"We have to dig them up ," Watson said. It is very hard work  - we are kind of doing the same kind of work the men themselves did in 1832 - but they deserve to have their story told."