(The following column by Lou Sessinger appeared on The Intelligencer website on May 6.)
PHILADELPHIA — There used to be a saying among old railroad men that beneath every countless tie along the thousands of miles of tracks crisscrossing America lay the body of an Irishman.
The railroads, canals, bridges and tunnels of the 19th century that enabled America to scale the heights of industrial power were to a large extent built with the muscle and sweat of thousands of Irish immigrants.
In nearby Chester County, a team of historians is trying to shed new light on the fate of a group of these Irish laborers more than 170 years ago.
William Watson and John Ahtes, two professors at Immaculata University, are looking for a mass grave believed to contain the remains of approximately 57 workers who died of cholera in 1832 while building a section of the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad in East Whiteland Township. Their efforts have been reported in various Philadelphia and Chester County media over the past few months.
A marker was erected at what people believed to be the site of the mass grave in 1909 and again in 1998. It’s just a few feet from the tracks of SEPTA’s R-5 Doylestown-Paoli rail line near Malvern.
But the grave’s exact location hasn’t been determined. The professors hope to find it, excavate it for study and ultimately re-inter the remains properly.
The little that’s known about the workers’ deaths comes from railroad company documents, old newspaper clippings and local lore.
What’s known is that the approximately 57 Irishmen docked in Philadelphia in June 1832 and were dead by August.
They were hired by a railroad contractor named Philip Duffy, and the stretch of rail line where they labored and perished was known as Duffy’s Cut. It was a dip between two hills, described as about 150 feet deep and about 200 yards long. The job of the workers was to fill in the cut with dirt to make an even grade for the track.
It must have been backbreaking work in the sweltering heat and humidity of a Pennsylvania summer. It was pick-and-shovel work, wheelbarrow work, the kind that Irishmen were willing to do all over a growing America. Anything to escape the poverty and British oppression of their native island.
Then workers started getting sick with high fevers and diarrhea. The contagious disease was described variously as cholera and black diphtheria. Whatever it was, men began to die.
According to some accounts, no local residents would help them. For one thing, the locals didn’t want to risk infection. For another thing, the sick men were Irish and they were Catholics. In much of America at that time, Irish Catholics were largely despised.
Learning of the epidemic ravaging the work camp, the Catholic bishop of Philadelphia arranged for an order of nursing nuns from Baltimore to tend to the sick and dying.
It’s suspected that the mass grave also contains the remains of nuns who succumbed to the disease. It was reported that the nuns who survived had to walk unassisted the 28 miles to Philadelphia when their work was done. People fearing contagion shunned them.
No one knows the names of these dead workers who lie together somewhere at the side of a railroad whose completion they never lived to see.
They came to a new land in search of a more promising life. They came with little more than a strong back, an obstinate, unbending spirit and a desire to work.
What they found was disease, death and undignified disposal at the bottom of a pit.
Their stay here lasted only a few weeks
They remind us that for some, unfortunately, the American Dream turns out to be a nightmare.