The "Duffy's Cut" Story

It was an ordinary day.  My wife recently brought a Lancaster County Magazine home from work with her.  She told me I may be interested in the issue since it carries a story titled "Duffy's Cut."  She said, "May have something to do with the railroad you just wrote about some time ago."  The story deals with a small gap in the topography along the original Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad line.  The gap was referred to as Mile 59, also known as Duffy's Cut.  The depression near Malvern, PA needed to be filled and leveled to allow the tracks to be laid so the railroad could pass Mile 59 on it's route to Columbia, Pennsylvania.  It was in June 1832 that the ship dubbed the John Stamp docked in Philadelphia after a two-month sail from Derry in northern Ireland.  57 young men, Irish immigrants, passengers on the ship, were hired by Philip Duffy to complete the job at Mile 59.  It ended up being the most difficult and deadly mile of the railroad.  Six weeks after they began their labor they were all dead.  Shortly after they began working, an outbreak of cholera struck the Philadelphia area.  The disease worked it's way west to the work site, probably by way of a contaminated creek which ran past the men's crude shanty they had assembled.  The locals shunned the sick immigrants, leaving them without aid or care.  When the epidemic finally diminished, all were dead, the shanty was burned down and covered with earth.  Most died from cholera, but at least seven were murdered. The majority were buried in a mass grave.  It is suspected that the company that was building the railroad burned the shanty, buried the men and covered the remains.  

Railroad officials never informed the relatives of the deaths of any of the 57 who died.  It was also suspected that vigilantes killed those who did not die from cholera.  Soon after there were tales and whispers of what had happened.  Glowing apparitions were said to have been seen dancing at the Mile 59 location.  An Irish railroad worker fenced off a spot near the suspected burial site, out of respect.  In 1909 a mid-level railroad official, Martin Clement, erected a granite-block enclosure at the fenced site.  His bosses told him he could not place any plaques at the site.  So, for years, hikers in the area found a memorial in the woods without markings.  

Dr. Bill Watson at the granite block enclosure.

In 2009 their remains were discovered and bullet holes, hatchet wounds and impact blows were found in the skulls of some that were unearthed.  Eventually, the passenger list from the John Stamp helped with the identity of one of those buried.  Originally efforts were made to find the bodies of all buried, but Amtrak, the current owner of the railroad line, refused, saying the mass grave was too close to active rail tracks to be exhumed.  

Grave of some of the victims in
West Laurel Hill Cemetery.

The bodies that were found were reburied in 2012 in Bala Cynwyd's West Laurel Hill Cemetery in a Christian service that included a bagpiper and a grave marked with a 12 foot high Celtic Cross from County Kilkenny, Ireland, donated by Immaculata University.  One body was able to be identified by history professor at Immaculata, Dr. Bill Watson.  John Ruddy was the only person to be positively identified.  His remains were returned to his native Ireland for burial.  Dr. Wilson and his twin brother, Rev. Frank Watson discovered a secret railroad file which was in the final possessions of their grandfather.  Seems that their grandfather was the assistant to Martin Clement who had created this secret railroad file.  After finding the file, the brothers and others spent seven years before they found the site of the buried victims.  

Bullet hole shown on one of the skulls recovered.

The positive identification of John Ruddy was made by Dr. Matt Patterson who is a dentist in Lancaster.  He became involved because of his background in forensic dentistry while in the Navy.  He said that no person on the planet has a mouth like any other human.  Better way to ID someone than using fingerprints.  DNA info is obtained from dentin which surrounds the pulp in the tooth.  Dentin is so well protected that even after a corpse has been rotting away in the ground for years, it can still reveal the ID of a person.  Since Matt was Irish, he felt a need to help find the story behind his buried countrymen.  The researchers who found the bodies have saved a tooth from each body to maybe eventually help with the IDs.  Another person responsible in the recovery efforts was Dr. Tim Bechtel.  He is a geophysicist who looks for items under the earth's surface.  He was enlisted by the Watsons to help by using his ground-penetrating radar and earth-resistivity meters.  Seems that Tim is a professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA and said that his love of science and technology made him lend a hand in finding the bodies.  Interesting story, to say the least.  Hopefully one day all bodies will find their rightful relatives so they can have closure.  And, just maybe, the truth of how and who caused the violent deaths to those who survived the cholera epidemic can be identified.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.