A DONEGAL teenager believed to have been murdered in America more than 180 years ago has been laid to rest.
Extensive DNA tests and a decade-long investigation led to the remains of 18-year-old John Ruddy being laid to rest in his native Ardara on Saturday.
He was one of 57 workers who died in an incident at Duffy’s Cut 30 miles from Philadelphia in August 1832.
The workers were all from Donegal, Derry and Tyrone and had arrived in Pennsylvania on a ship from Derry City just three months earlier.
Two Irish-American brothers, Immaculata University Professor William Watson and his Lutheran preacher brother Frank, say there was a cholera outbreak on the railroad and the workers either died of the disease or were bludgeoned to death to prevent them leaving it.
The skulls of six of the located remains showed fractures, including that of John Ruddy.
Only his remains however have been formally identified, with DNA samples taken from known relatives.
Vincent Gallagher, a native of Donegal and now living in Philadelphia, donated a grave in Ardara for Saturday’s re-interrment.
“John Ruddy’s body was the only one of those found that they were able to positively identify,” said Mr Gallagher.
The remains of five others – including a woman – were reburied at a cemetery near Duffy’s Cut last year.
Permission to excavate the site further has been refused because the main AmTrak railway to Philadelphia now runs through it.
On Saturday Father Austin Laverty conducted a graveside homily for Ruddy, originally from Inishowen but with relatives in the Ardara area.
One of the historians behind the Duffy’s Cut project Earl Schandelmeier helped carry Ruddy’s coffin to his final resting place.
Three pipers played as relatives James and Bernard Ruddy from Quigley’s Point and Sadie Ruddy from Portnoo followed.
