In 2009, a 10-year search for the bodies of 57 Irish immigrants at Duffy's Cut in the woods of Malvern, PA uncovered remains of only seven of them. They had been killed by vigilantes due to anti-Irish sentiment and a fear of cholera which may have infected some of the workers.  The bodies showed that violence was the cause of death and not cholera.  The railroad had buried them and burned their shanties.  Amtrak refused further excavation as it is too close to their tracks!  The Irish community erected a memorial and I wrote this verse . . .

DUFFY's CUT

In Eighteen Hundred and Thirty Two

when poverty forced them to roam,

fifty-seven men left hunger behind

for employment far from home.

They suffered a trip on a coffin ship

in hope of selling their sweat.

In a land they knew not they would cast their lot

for whatever their labor could get.

All they sought was an honest wage

to share what they might find

with all their loved ones, young and aged,

that they had left behind

They sailed with hunger and disease

on a ship without food nor galley,

then found a job laying railroad track

through a densely wooded valley.

Weak from their journey some fell ill

and needed medical assistance

but when they sought some local aid

all they found was resistance.

It was then that hate and prejudice

revealed its ugly face

to that desperate group of Irishmen

in that lonely wooded place.

In the dark of night came the vigilantes,

some call them misguided men,

but what those killers did that night

must never happen again

Fifty-seven young Irish laborers

who came to build this land,

now lie entombed beneath its soil

killed by a murderer’s hand.

The perpetrators are long since gone

and God will have taken fair vengeance,

and what is left now for us to do

but insure the victims remembrance.