Biggest secrets yet to be revealed

[caption id="attachment_79772" align="alignnone" width="300"]

Dr. William Watson of Immaculata University.[/caption]

By Ray O’Hanlon
rohanlon@irishecho.com

Over the coming days the Duffy’s Cut excavation team, with Dr. William Watson of Immaculata University to the fore, will start to extract core samples from what is believed to be a mass grave, the last resting place of a group of Irish immigrant railroad workers who died either from disease or nativist violence in 1832.

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The mass grave is under ruined stone structure just yards from an AMTRAK/SEPTA commuter rail line in Malvern, PA, less than twenty miles from Philadelphia.

“It should take about a month to go through the core samples, then I expect that we will be starting a full excavation in the fall,” Dr. Watson told the Echo.

Watson is recently returned from Ireland and the interment in County Tyrone of the partial remains of Duffy’s Cut immigrant, Catherine Burns.

“We are also waiting for DNA on the Ruddy samples, which is in the hands of our forensic dentist,” added Dr. Watson, this in reference to the remains of Duffy’s Cut victim John Ruddy, whose partial remains were previously interred in his native Donegal.

 

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