Nostalgia & History > 1800s Massacre of railway builders in Pennsylvania

A 2018 report on a book about the massacre of Irish railway construction workers on a section of the Pennsylvania Railroad near present day Malvern PA.  The book asserts the workers were killed by vigilantes who believed they were bringing cholera from Ireland.  The vigilantes were employed by management to keep workers in line.  When the work site became infected, vigilantes swooped in and killed everyone.  Quick diagnosis of cholera as the cause of death, quick burial in sealed coffins, end of problem.

Other mass grave sites of railroad and canal builders are near Hawley PA, and east of Altoona.

https://www.app.com/story/news/history/2018/10/24/duffys-cut-frank-watson/1729104002/

Thanks. There was an article about this many years ago, probably the mid-1990s, in the PRRT&HS Keystone magazine, but the deaths were said to be attributed solely to cholera and not murder.  Noone would help them except some nuns who walked from Paoli to try to care for them. The site is marked but it's hard to see when riding trains because it's on a curve, up a hill, between apartments and woods so it's easy to miss at speed.  I did some inspection work for Amtrak there a couple of years ago; the rail grade was cut into the side of a hill of rock.