Duffy's Cut Mass Grave

Nearby lies a mass grave holding fifty-seven Irish immigrant workers who died in August of eighteen thirty-two. They had just arrived in the United States and were hired by a contractor named Duffy to build a section of the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad west of Malvern. Cholera swept through the camp, and the men died within weeks of landing.

Prejudice against Irish Catholics meant that care was withheld or denied. The workers were buried in an unmarked trench on the railroad's right-of-way. Their names were largely forgotten for over a century until researchers began recovering records. Forensic investigations conducted in the two thousands found skeletal evidence suggesting some of the men may have died from violence as well as disease, deepening the tragedy. Their story stands for a broader truth about the cost of building nineteenth-century American infrastructure, paid by the men least protected by the society that needed their labor most.