Duffy’s Cut victim to be given a face

Local artist to attempt reconstruction from skull

The seventh skull to be excavated from Duffy’ Cut has no name, but it may soon have a face thanks to the offer of a local artist – Kristine Sullivan Strawser – to attempt a facial reconstruction.

In the fall of 1832, 57 Irishmen died – either of cholera or gunshot wound, or both – at Duffy’s Cut, a stretch of railroad line which was being constructed near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They had been brought over to work the railroad by one Philip Duffy, but within six weeks all were dead.

The local legends of their death had long interested Dr. Frank Watson. Upon the death of his grandfather, he inherited a large file of records that his grandfather’s former boss, an employee of the Pennsylvania Rail Company, had kept on the deaths of the 57 men.

Watson was, thereafter, hooked. He and his brother Bill, who is a professor of history at Immaculata University, have worked at the site from the beginning with a team of other historians and archaeologists.

Watson feels that this reconstruction will be a major step in the resolution of the Duffy’s Cut story.

“It puts a physical face to the story in a way the bare skulls won’t be able to provide,” he said in a telephone interview. “The facial bones are the most delicate and the other skulls had just deteriorated. One man’s jaw had fallen off.”

Watson believes that the history of Duffy’s Cut has a number of levels, including an emotional one.

“This is part of the human part of the story. We have names, where they came from, how old they were, but to get a face will be a big thing.”  

The task of creating that face falls to Kristine Sullivan Strawser, a former journalist currently undertaking a postgraduate degree in art.

Strawser offered to recreate the skull. Or, in her words, “I imposed myself on these people and they were gracious in allowing me to impose.”

For Strawser, who is of Irish ancestry, this is as much personal as professional.

“I live not far from where the excavation is taking place,” she said. “I’d been hearing about it on the radio and I was most taken with it. My ancestors were moving around in the U.S. at that time.”

While Strawser does not have a forensic reconstruction background, she feels she can produce a good replica of the face of the man that the seventh skull used to be.

“I’ve done a fair amount of representational work and I feel confident I can get a reasonable reputation.”

Strawser intends to immerse herself in the research, finding as many renderings of Irish people from that era as possible, examining trends in clothing from the area of north west Ireland that the men came from, even finding out the likely effects of diet on the dead men.

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Nster.com