February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Duffy’s Cut is in the Philadelphia suburb of Malvern and adjoins a commuter railroad. It’s a fair bet that even those commuters who raise their eyes from books newspapers, laptops and various other traveling comforts and distractions, would not discern anything remarkable about a patch of grass, dirt and woods that looks like so much else from a moving train.
But for all this time, Watson and his colleagues from Immaculata University and elsewhere have been staring hard at the topography of Duffy’s Cut wishing with the unflinching belief that hidden below the surface are secrets.
Now, at long last, this is precisely what is happening. The process has been painstaking but that was always to be expected. After all, the Duffy’s Cut project has been an archeological dig, demanding all the deliberation and care that such a process implies.
You could upend the soil covering the site in a matter of minutes with heavy machinery and learn whether or not anything, or anyone, has been hidden from view.
But that, of course, would in large part destroy what has been sought for all this time.
And what has been most sought has been human remains, the bones of Irish railroad workers dating back to a time when the railroad was something new and wondrous in the eastern United States, and still altogether unknown in most of the rest of the new country.
In recent days, Dr. Watson and his colleagues have been digging up bones aplenty and it would seem that their mission, long on time and at times tortuous, has been both worthwhile and indeed a triumph.
Now that remains have been found a new process of investigation and analyses necessarily begins. It is now possible that we will find who has been resting uneasily all these years at Duffy’s Cut, and what circumstances brought them to what Dr. Watson believes was a cruel and untimely end.
For now, however, we should take pride in the fact that a chapter of Irish American history, albeit a sad one, has been revealed anew and that the life stories of these long lost immigrants will be presented, honored and validated to the world for what really will be the very first time.