Massacre at Duffy's Cut

Book excerpt: The shocking murder of railroad laborers in nineteenth-century Pennsylvania—and the centuries-long coverup that followed—is revealed in this true crime history. In June 1832, railroad contractor Philip Duffy hired fifty-seven Irish immigrant laborers to work on Pennsylvania's Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad. They were sent to a stretch of track in rural Chester County known as Duffy's Cut. Six weeks later, all of them were dead. For more than 180 years, the railroad maintained that cholera was to blame and kept the historical record under lock and key. In a harrowing modern-day excavation of their mass grave, a group of academics and volunteers found evidence some of the laborers were murdered. Authors and research leaders Dr. William E. Watson and Dr. J. Francis Watson reveal the tragedy, mystery, and discovery of what really happened at Duffy's Cut.