More than 50 Irish immigrants may have been murdered in 1832 in Philadelphia.
Bette Browne reports on the excavation of a mass grave to find out what happened in the forgotten massacre
On
a stretch of US railroad near Philadelphia lies a dark secret from
America’s past, entombed with the remains of over 50 Irish immigrants.
It hints at cruelty, betrayal and unspeakable violence but now a
breakthrough could mean the long search for answers may be reaching the
endgame and the chilling conclusion that many of the immigrants were
killed in a massacre.
The breakthrough will allow excavation to resume at the mass grave near
tracks now belonging to Amtrak, the US rail company. The company’s
safety concerns had stalled the project for the last two years after the
excavation of the remains of seven bodies.
But now permission will be given for the excavation project to resume its search later this year for the remaining 50 bodies.
“This is something that we have been working on for two years and now —
touch on wood — it’s going ahead,” one of the leaders of the project,
historian Bill Watson, said in a telephone interview from Pennsylvania’s
Immaculata University, which is just a few miles from the site of the
tragedy at Duffy’s Cut near the town of Malvern.
“We’re looking at 57 altogether and if there are signs of violence on
all of the remains it would be the worst mass murder in Pennsylvania
history and perhaps even in American history,” said Watson, who began
the project 12 year ago.
The seven bodies already excavated have been examined by Dr Janet Monge,
a forensic anthropologist and the curator at the University Of
Pennsylvania Museum, who has worked on the investigation for over a
decade and has come to a shocking conclusion.
“I would have to say that it was actually a massacre,” she said in a telephone interview from the university.
“Seven were excavated but in various stages of preservation. Of the five
we were really able to examine, they all showed signs essentially of
wounds. The preponderance of evidence is that they met a violent death.
We have evidence of blunt force trauma, evidence of sharp force trauma
and we even have evidence of bullet holes.”
She explained her conclusion like this: “So many things can happen to
bones from the time a person dies to the time they’re retrieved that you
can definitely misconstrue parts of the damage to the bone.
So if we
had a situation where we had just one skeleton, I would be inclined to
very hesitantly say it’s possible that these people died under these
circumstances, but as we pulled out more of the bones it became more and
more clear that all of these individuals had died under similar
circumstances.
“The probability of this happening randomly to every single skeleton
that was extracted is probably nil. So it’s not just that a single bone
showed evidence of violence, it’s all of them that came from the
excavation showed it and that makes me draw the conclusion that
something happened there that was worth covering up and I would have to
say it was actually a massacre.”
The story of this tragedy began 182 years ago when 57 young Irish
immigrants set out from Derry on board the British ship John Stamp,
bound for Philadelphia and the promise of a better life.
Most of them had come from Donegal, Derry and Tyrone. The passenger
manifest lists young men like William Devine, aged 21, George Quigley,
aged 22, and 18-year-old John Ruddy. There were some women on board too,
among them Eliza Byrnes, aged 22, and 20-year-old Eliza Diven (spelling
from manifest).
That April morning as they set sail, the heartbreak of the young group
of immigrants may have been tempered by a degree of adventure, fuelled
by stories of the money to be made building railroads in the New World.
And sure enough, two months later, on 23 June 1832, when the John Stamp
docked in Philadelphia one of their own, an Irish contractor named
Philip Duffy, was waiting for the immigrants and as they came ashore he
offered them jobs.
Duffy had been contracted by the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad to
build a section of track called Mile 59, which later became known as
Duffy’s Cut. The job offers must have seemed like manna from heaven
after the gruelling two-month journey across the Atlantic.
But what awaited these young immigrants on the Pennsylvania railroad
that summer of 1832 turned out to be a gruesome kind of hell. Within six
weeks all of them were dead.
It was said they had all died when cholera swept through their shanty
town, but over time darker stories began to surface that many had been
murdered by local vigilantes who feared either the spread of the disease
or the foreigners themselves.
For Bill Watson and the other members of the excavation project,
forensic evidence suggest a series of events in which a few workers
escaped from an enforced quarantine, were caught and killed and then
buried near Duffy’s Cut.
“The mile of track where this work was taking place was where a local
vigilante group, the East Whiteland Horse company, operated,” Bill
Watson explains.
“We suspect when cholera hit that quarantine was set up around the
valley and was enforced by the vigilantes around the camp at Duffy’s
Cut. The most likely scenario is that the workers had been isolated
because of the cholera outbreak but some of them broke quarantine and
were killed.”
Their bodies were dumped in a mass grave near the stretch of railroad
where they had so briefly worked. The railroad company that had hired
them never informed their families of what had happened and their mass
grave remained unmarked.
Some years later an Irish railroad worker, who had heard fragments of
the story, fenced off a spot in the general area of the grave as a mark
of respect for his dead compatriots.
The fenced-off spot remained thus for over 70 years until 1909 when a
rail official named Martin Clement, who later became president of the
then Pennsylvania Railroad, was assigned by the company to investigate
the case.
Whatever Clement discovered, however, remained secret. He did erect a
granite-block enclosure, but no explanatory plaque was placed at the
spot.
The secret would remain untold until another century dawned and the
first rays of light began to be cast on the case in 2002 after the death
of Clement’s assistant, a man named Joseph Tripican.
Tripican was also the grandfather of Bill Watson and his brother Frank, a
Lutheran minister, and one morning in 2002 when the Watsons were going
through their grandfather’s papers they made a dramatic discovery.
Among the papers, they found the file on Clement’s 1909 investigation
that their grandfather had taken home with him after the company went
bankrupt in 1970.These company records indicated that at least 57 people
— not eight — had died at Duffy’s Cut.
“The file included press clippings from 1832 which said that while
cholera hit hard in many areas in Philadelphia in July and hit Duffy’s
Cut in August there had been only eight or nine deaths there.
Newspapers
were very accurate in recording cholera deaths to help contain
epidemics. But Clement’s investigation put the number of dead at 57,”
says Bill Watson.
The Watsons suspected a possible cover-up and decided to investigate the case themselves.
Two years later, on June 18, 2004, the brothers attended the dedication
of first plaque erected at the site. The text of the Pennsylvania state
historical marker reads, “Nearby is the mass grave of 57 Irish immigrant
workers who died in August, 1832, of cholera. They had recently arrived
in the United States and were employed by a construction contractor,
named Duffy, for the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad. Prejudice
against Irish Catholics contributed to the denial of care to the
workers.
Their illness and death typified the hazards faced by many 19th
century immigrant industrial workers.”
But the Watsons remained convinced that cholera was only part of the
story and intensified their investigation. Soon their determination
began to pay off.
In 2005, the brothers found what Bill Watson called the holy grail. “I
found an Erin go Bragh pipe stem at the site in November 2005. Frank
found pieces of a bowl that has shamrocks and harps on it and we found
the stem of a pipe that has Derry stamped on it, the port of departure
of the ship.”
They suspected they must be close to the bodies but they also knew they
needed scientific expertise, so geophysicist Tim Bechtel agreed to join
the project. That would become a turning point.
Using ground-penetrating radar and electrical imaging, Bechtel helped to
pinpoint key areas to dig for the bodies and on March 20, 2009, the
team made a discovery that stunned them — they found a human shin bone.
More discoveries followed. Fragments of skulls and more bones were found
and over the next two years they would find the remains of six men and
one woman.
“No one had told me to anticipate finding the remains of a woman at the
site. It made me feel good when I discovered this new information,” says
Dr Monge. “We found six bodies. One was just a stain with the outline
of a human being.”
Bill Watson said the work camps usually had a washerwoman and a cook and
the body of the woman is possibly Eliza Byrnes [listed as passenger 42
on the manifest] or Eliza Diven [listed as passenger 34].
On March 9, 2012, at a moving ceremony at West Laurel Hill cemetery in
Bala Cynwyd, near Philadelphia, five small pine coffins with the remains
of four men and one woman found at Duffy’s Cut were laid to rest
beneath a 10-foot high Celtic cross. Each had a rose on top — yellow for
the men, white for thewoman.
One year later, on March 2, 2013, the sixth body unearthed at the site
was taken to Ireland for burial in Ardara, Co Donegal. It was that of
18-year-old John Ruddy, who had ultimately been identified through ship
records and a dental anomaly — a missing upper molar that runs in the
family.
Ruddys in Ireland contacted Bill Watson after reading about the
discovery and a family member donated DNA for tests to be conducted.
Subsequently, Ruddy’s remains were the first-found set of remains from
Duffy’s Cut in 2009 which were positively identified.
And now, the search for the final 50 bodies of these Irish immigrants
resumes with the go-ahead for excavation. “If we can find these remains,
we’ll know whether this was a huge mass murder or just part of the crew
that was killed,” Bill Watson says.
“Janet [Dr Monge] will be doing a lot of the forensic analysis and that
will take some time. We also hope to have DNA done so we can find living
descendants. So there’s a lot of work still to be done.”
Dr Monge is not certain what new stories she will find. “Would looking
at the remaining 50 be more convincing versus looking at the sub sample?
Do we need 50-plus of them showing evidence of trauma in order to
convince us that this [a massacre] was the case.
“I’m interested in immigrant experience in the US. This is a particular
case of an Irish tragedy, an Irish immigration tragedy, but these
tragedies play out across all immigrant populations in the US in
different forms and it’s a story which needs to be told. All of these
people were instrumental in building this country. We decided that it
would be worth it for our own understanding of the site.”
For Bill Watson, understanding and empathy are the main motivators that have driven the research team.
“It could have been us,” he said. “These guys came over here with
nothing, looking for the American dream like countless people have done.
They thought they were going to make it and within six weeks of arrival
they were dead.
“The cholera outbreak had already started before the Irish arrived.
“The disease struck the work site probably because of water from a
contaminated creek running past the camp site. The Irish couldn’t have
brought the cholera with them but they were all blamed for it in the
anti-immigrant ‘Nativist’ spirit of the times.
“It would also have been bad for Duffy if the word got out of what had
happened because he couldn’t recruit more people back in Ireland to come
and work for him. So everyone kept it quiet.”
Certainly there is no evidence that Duffy’s career suffered. Philip
Duffy died in Philadelphia in 1871 at the age of 88, after a long
career with the railroad.
Bill Watson believes there may be other similar stories of violence that
happened in Pennsylvania during the cholera epidemic of 1832.
“This is the springboard for a lot of activity we are going to be
undertaking over the next couple of years. I don’t think this is a
unique story, unfortunately. I think it’s one of those rare stories than
can be recovered.
“We know of two other mass graves that we intend to explore when we’re
done with Duffy’s Cut, also with Irish workers in them. There’s no
obfuscation or hiding of records or anything like we had with the story
of Duffy’s Cut in those cases.
“One grave is in Downingtown, [about 30 miles west of Philadelphia], and
one is in a place called Spring City, [about 30 miles north of
Philadelphia].
“Then there is the site of Mile 48 of the railroad [Duffy’s cut is Mile
59]. There was an Irish contractor there named Peter Connor and his
entire crew died as well in the epidemic of 1832 and we suspect the
violence we found on those at Duffy’s cut is not going to be unique.
“These guys were highly expendable. They cost a quarter a day [25 US
cents]. They could be worked literally to death and no one would care.
“Everyone involved in this knows it could have been us but for time and
circumstances. My paternal grandmother’s side was Irish named Donnelly,
so it could have been me. It could have been my son.”
TIMELINE OF EVENTS
April 1832: The John Stamp sails from Derry with the immigrant group of 57, plus 103 other passengers
June 1832: Ship docks at Philadelphia
July/August 1832: Cholera outbreak near Philadelphia. 57 Irish immigrant workers die
Circa 1840: Mass grave fenced off by Irish rail worker
1909: Deaths investigated by Martin Clement
Granite block enclosure erected around mass grave but no explanatory plaque
2002: Clement’s investigation file discovered by Watson brothers
2004: Pennsylvania state historical marker dedicated near the site
2005: Irish artefacts found at site
2009: Human shin bone found, then other remains
2009-2011: Six sets of human remains and one human stain found
Forensic analysis shows signs of violent death. Evidence of bullet holes
2012: Remains of six bodies buried in West Laurel Hill cemetery, Pennsylvania
2013: John Ruddy’s remains repatriated and buried in Ardara, Co Donegal
2014: Final phase of search for remaining 50 bodies gets go-ahead to resume
FROM DERRY TO PHILADELPHIA
Partial list of 16 of the 57 passengers who sailed from Derry on board
the John Stamp in April 1832 and landed in Philadelphia in June 1832.
They and 41 others, as yet unidentified, died at Duffy’s Cut, near
Philadelphia, six weeks later in a suspected massacre:
Males:
George Doherty, age 28 from Donegal
John Ruddy, age 18 from Donegal
William Putetill, age 20 from Donegal
William Devine, age 21 from Donegal (transcribed as Miriam in the original manifest; this is possibly William)
James Deveney, age 26 from Tyrone
Daniel McCahill, age 25 from Donegal
Bernie McGarty, age 20 from Donegal
David Patchill, age 20 from Donegal
Robert Skelton, age 20 from Donegal
Patrick McAnamy, age 20 from Tyrone
Bernard McIlheaney, age 23 from Donegal
George Quigly, age 22 from Donegal
Samuel Forbes, age 23 from Tyrone
John McGlone, age 25 from Derry
John McClanon, age 24 from Derry
Female identified as possibly
Catherine/Eliza Byrnes, age 22 from Tyrone
or
Elizabeth/Eliza Diven, age 20 from Donegal
Based on passenger manifest from John Stamp, transcribed by the
Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild, and information from historian Bill
Watson.
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