Congratulations
Back in the September 2007 Hibernian Digest, we told the story of 57 young Irishmen who reportedly died of cholera while working on a railroad spur about 20 miles west of Philadelphia and ended up in a mass grave hastily dug beside the tracks. In that article we speculated that anti-Irish sentiment at the time may have resulted in a more violent end for these young men and that only the location and examination of the remains would verify that. A shin bone, found in 2009, convinced diggers that they were at the proper location and exploration continued. After several years of fruitlessly scouring the area for the men’s final resting place, seven sets of remains have been uncovered and the latest bodies do show signs of a violent end. On 20 August, Lori Murphy reported on Irishphiladelphia.com an update to the story and in the August 24 edition of the Irish Echo, our friend Ray O’Hanlon featured the news under a banner headline IT WAS MURDER! According to Ms Murphy, two skulls unearthed at a probable mass grave near Philadelphia this month showed signs of violence, including a possible bullet hole. Another pair of skulls found earlier at the woodsy site also displayed traumas, seeming to confirm the suspicions of two historians leading the archaeological dig. Professor Watson, chairman of the history department at nearby Immaculata University who has been digging for nearly a decade with his twin brother Frank to unravel the 178-year-old mystery said, This was much more than a cholera epidemic. He told the Echo, their skulls show signs of a violent death. The men suffered very bad blows to the head while one of the skulls had what appears to be a bullet hole. Anti-Irish nativist sentiment made 19th-century America a hostile place for these workers, who lived in a shanty in the woods while laying track. It is now believed that when some of the workers fell ill, they sent for help and a group of nuns came to administer to them. Meanwhile when word got out that some of the workers had cholera, anti-Irish prejudice and fear of the disease prompted an attack by nativist vigilantes. That theory is now supported by the recovered remains. Janet Monge, an anthropologist working on the project, said, I don’t think we need to be so hesitant in coming to the conclusion now that violence was the cause of death and not cholera, although these men might have had cholera in addition. She added, Last year, when we only had two skulls to examine, I was a bit hesitant in claiming that we were looking at traumatic death, but this year, in every specimen that we examine, it really seems to indicate that they were victims of blunt-force trauma around the time of death. Check out Duffy’s Cut on the internet for more information – it’s a remarkable story! And we agree with our friend Ray, it was murder!
Another remarkable story has just been released by Harolyn Enis in her book When Ireland Fell Silent. As a historian, I rarely, if ever, read fiction. The only exception is books by Morgan Llyewelyn who creates a fictional person or persons to live out and tell the story behind historical events as did John Steinbeck in Grapes of Wrath. Well, we have another like author in Harolyn Enis. I was drawn to her book by its subject – the Great Hunger. As a student of that subject for many years and having written and lectured extensively on it myself, I thought to do a critical analysis and expose another revisionist historian who minimizes the catastrophe and calls it a famine rather than the genocide that it was. Surprise of surprises, I found that I couldn’t put the book down. It is not only factual in every detail, but her style of writing put me in the cottage beside the Reilly family that she created to take us through the horrors of hunger. I even welled up tears at her telling of the American Wake. More than the formal facts format of most histories, you will find this one easy to read and, more important, easy to comprehend, even though it will never be easy to understand the rationale for the Hunger. This is so much better than a pure history, it is a true history for even though the family is fictitious, it allows you to experience anxiety, frustration and desperation as they experience the historically factual hardships imposed by a greedy colonial administration. More importantly, it explains the survival of our Irish culture despite the tragic times.
I contacted the author to offer my congratulations and she told me that her son, Brian, started reading the book and after the first 100 pages expressed the opinion that the Irish should not have died passively without a fight. After reading more, he offered a profound evaluation: The more I think about it, he said, it was HOPE that kept them passive. By the time hope was gone and they realized that the British were not going to help them, they were too weak. If they had known British intentions from the beginning, they would have been more aggressive. It was Hope that did them in. An astute observation! To read this book is to experience An Gorta Mor. It will be available on Amazon.com in October, check out the review in this issue.
Don’t forget to check out the histories on AOH.COM and NYAOH.COM and until next time, keep the tradition alive.