(RNS) — Along a well-traveled local road in affluent Malvern, Pennsylvania, a blue and gold historical marker commemorates a nearby mass grave of Irish Catholic immigrants who died in 1832 while building a railroad west of Philadelphia. They died, the marker notes, in the cholera epidemic that struck the city that year, but the marker adds that “Prejudice against Irish Catholics contributed to the denial of care to the workers.”
The story of Duffy’s Cut has been memorialized in books, on television and in song. But last spring, the saga of the estimated 57 men and (a few) women buried at Mile 59 on the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad took another turn as the mass grave of more than 120 more workers was discovered, in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, on the grounds of a cemetery about 11 miles from Malvern.
Some of the bodies there, excavators soon found, probably did not die of natural causes.
The tragic tale has the resonance of a Netflix thriller — suspicion of long-forgotten crimes, not to mention reports of apparitions haunting the suburban streets that have long since replaced the rural landscape of the 1830s. But local historians say it is less a ghost story than an ugly brew of anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant bias at a time when Irish populations were surging and Catholic institutions were starting to establish themselves in major cities such as Philadelphia.
“It’s really hard for contemporary Americans, (particularly) post-John F. Kennedy Am …