The Duffy's Cut Mass Grave

The recent excavation of a mass grave of Irish railroad workers at a site known as Duffy's Cut in Malvern, Pennsylvania is shedding light on the prejudice, fear, and violence that these immigrants faced in the United States in the early nineteenth century. Duffy's Cut holds a mass grave of 57 Irish laborers, whose deaths in August of 1832 had been attributed to a cholera outbreak.

Immaculata University is spearheading the Duffy's Cut Project to excavate and archive the historical evidence of a possible massacre of these workers. The project website includes links to interviews with project leaders, news coverage of the excavation, and details of a two-day seminar on The Legend of Duffy's Cut scheduled for October.

Drs. William and Frank Watson have been overseeing the excavation of the site, and have recovered partial skeletal remains of at least seven people. Evidence of skull fractures and possible bullet wounds on some of the remains suggest that several of these laborers were the victims of violence. Indeed, since all of the workers had arrived in the United States from Derry in County Cork, Ireland on 23 June1832, it is highly unlikely that they all would have died from cholera a mere eight weeks later.

Students of the Civil War Era generally are very familiar with the explosion of violence against immigrants, particularly in the northern states, in the late 1830s and 1840s. In Pennsylvania, the apparent murders of these Irish immigrants have long been overshadowed by the infamous Philadelphia nativist riots of May and July 1844. Those riots have been attributed to rising anti-Catholic prejudice of native-born Protestants and laborers' fears of potential economic competition from new migrants. The Duffy's Cut excavation reminds us that nativist tension and violence had a long history in the antebellum North. Whereas many histories of antebellum nativist violence emphasize economic crises as contributive factors, this archeological find also reminds us that a broader range of perceived threats to the community, including disease epidemics, similarly stoked violent reactions against the country's typically impecunious Catholic, Irish immigrants in this era.