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New searches in US for remains of Irish 'Duffy's Cut' victims

The coffin of Catherine Burns is carried from St. Patrick's Church, Clonoe. Picture by Ann McManus
The coffin of Catherine Burns is carried from St. Patrick's Church, Clonoe. Picture by Ann McManus The coffin of Catherine Burns is carried from St. Patrick's Church, Clonoe. Picture by Ann McManus

NEW searches to try and find the remains of 51 Irish railway workers, some of whom were murdered, have begun in the US.

In 1832, 57 immigrants from counties Tyrone, Derry and Donegal were hired to build a railway between Philadelphia and Columbia, on a site that became known as Duffy's Cut.

But within weeks all of them had died and were buried in unmarked graves.

Some died from cholera but others were understood to have been murdered by people from the area who believed the Irish workers were spreading the deadly disease.

Six sets of remains, including those of 29-year-old Co Tyrone woman Catherine Burns, have already been found.

New searches are focussing on the site of a mass grave, understood to contain the remains of 51 workers.

The site is close to where the first six remains were found.

Historian Dr Frank Watson said the new dig is taking place close to a busy railway line.

"We have core samples being taken between 20 and 30 feet along an area underground that our geophysicist indicated looks like the mass burial place," he told the BBC.

"If we find human remains in these core samples, our intent is to excavate the remains and re-inter them in the United States and Ireland as we have already done with the first six bodies who were buried at the base of the 1832 railroad tracks."

In July, a funeral Mass for Ms Burns was celebrated at St Patrick's Church in Clonoe, near Coalisland - more than 180 years after she died.

Injuries to her skull showed she had been murdered.

Around 400 people turned out for the Mass and burial of the tragic widow.