Posted on 08/17/2010 8:28:24 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Online:
http://www.duffyscutproject.com
Malvern, PA -- Young and strapping, the 57 Irish immigrants began grueling work in the summer of 1832 on the Philadelphia and Columbia railroad. Within weeks, all were dead of cholera.
Or were they murdered?
Two skulls unearthed at a probable mass grave near Philadelphia this month showed signs of violence, including a possible bullet hole. Another pair of skulls found earlier at the woodsy site also displayed traumas, seeming to confirm the suspicions of two historians leading the archaeological dig.
"This was much more than a cholera epidemic," William Watson said.
Watson, chairman of the history department at nearby Immaculata University, and his twin brother Frank have been working for nearly a decade to unravel the 178-year-old mystery.
Anti-Irish sentiment made 19th-century America a hostile place for the workers, who lived amid wilderness in a shanty near the railroad tracks. The land is now preserved open space behind suburban homes in Malvern, about 20 miles west of Philadelphia.
The Watsons and their research team have recovered seven sets of remains since digging up the first shin bone in March 2009, following years of fruitlessly scouring the area for the men's final resting place. One victim has been tentatively identified, pending DNA tests.
The brothers have long hypothesized that many of the workers succumbed to cholera, a bacterial infection spread by contaminated water or food. The disease was rampant at the time, and had a typical mortality rate of 40 percent to 60 percent.
The other immigrants, they surmise, were killed by vigilantes because of anti-Irish prejudice, tension between affluent residents and poor transient workers, or intense fear of cholera - or a combination of all three.
Now, their theory is supported by the four recovered skulls, which indicate the men probably suffered blows to the head.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
My gggrandfather was a member of the Molly Maguires and so was my ggrandfather. My ggrandfather who was 10 when he arrived in PA served in the Union Army in San Francisco during the Civil War and eventually died of Black Lung from working in the mines around Houtzville and Centerville, PA. He had 13 children — 11 lived to maturity. One of his sons died in a Christmas Eve mine collapse in the Centerville area.
“No Irish need apply ...”
My Hispanic co-workers were shocked, shocked I say, to learn about such history.
Also learned at recent family reunion that one of my aunt’s great=aunt’s fabricated a huge amount of family history relating them to English gentry. Instead they were a mixture of English and Irish working stiffs.
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