Page 30 - The Westerner Magazine Halloween 2018

was more to the story. Have a seat next York to open up the west to trade. It
to me at the DSP campfire and wrap was important that the Commonwealth
your blanket around you tightly. The found money to expand the railroads
story that follows will chill you to the and the Philadelphia and Columbia was

bone! one of the first to be built.

Railroad workers were cheap labor, at

the time. We borrowed from British
labor practices where Irish labor had
already been used to build railroads and

canals. We also imported technology
from England so that the first rails were
British.

With William E. Watson, PhD as
interviewed by Bruce Bennett, editor of the

Westerner© magazine

BB: Dr. Watson, I want to think you for

joining me to discuss your interesting
findings at Duffy’s Cut. Can you give
us a little background?

WW: Bruce, we’re taking about a time
when railroads were expanding trade

westward. Originally the Philadelphia
and Columbia line started at the

Belmont Plateau from an inclined plane

to the first railroad out of the city. It Irish labor was at twenty-five cents a
roughly followed the same north-south day. Contractors were paid by the mile.
path as the current line, which Phil Duffy, who this place was named

terminates in Pittsburgh. after, was an Irishman himself. He came
to America in 1798 and was from Ulster.
This was a time when Pennsylvania was
He may have been involved in the 1798
in competition with Maryland and New
United Irishmen Rebellion. When the