Evidence suggesting a second mass grave of Irish railroad workers is unearthed in Downingtown

Past a broken piece of fence that used to mark the edge of the cemetery, down a steep embankment covered with dead leaves, two brothers found the human remains. There were two teeth, a fragment of jaw that could fit in a palm, and a handful of bone crumbs.

William Watson, a historian at Immaculata University, and his twin brother, Frank Watson, a pastor and an archivist, are the researchers who first unearthed Duffy’s Cut — a mass grave of Irish railroad workers unceremoniously buried along a wooded stretch of railroad track in Malvern in 1832.

In May, the Watson brothers discovered more human remains, this time on land owned by Northwood Cemetery in Downingtown. The new site is about 11 miles from Duffy’s Cut. They say the latest find may indicate a second, previously undiscovered mass grave of Irish laborers dating to the same time period. The Daily Local News first reported the find.

Frank Watson said the researchers would not be surprised if they found evidence of violence at the site — just like they did the last time.

The 57 laborers at Duffy’s Cut arrived on a ship from Derry, Ireland, in the summer of 1832. Within eight weeks of their arrival, they were all dead.

For years, the official story was that they had died from cholera while working on the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad.

Then in 2000, William Watson was at Immaculata’s campus late one night when he saw ghostly figures on the lawn. Two years later, he and his brother were reading files from their grandfather, who worked as an executive assistant to the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In them, there were stories of people seeing ghosts dancing on graves at Duffy’s Cut that seemed to echo what Watson had seen.

“That’s the unconventional start of this thing,” William Watson said. He began to research what happened.

The Watsons and a team of volunteers found that cholera likely did likely strike the shanty where the laborers were living, and that many of them died from disease.

But they also discovered signs of violence among the skeletal remains, including a bullet in one of the skulls. Working alongside forensic anthropologists at the Penn Museum, the researchers came to believe a handful of the laborers did not have cholera but were murdered, in a fit of anti-immigrant, anti-cholera panic.

“It’s a classic story: Folks come to America looking for a better life,” Frank Watson said. “The sad reality is these guys didn’t have a chance, pigeonholed and blamed for a disease that they didn’t bring.”

Through newspaper records, ship logs, and Pennsylvania Railroad files, the Watsons were able to piece together the names of those who died and, in some cases, even return their remains to Ireland for proper burial.

The story, which unfolded over a decade between 2002 and 2012, inspired international news coverage, documentaries, books, artwork, songs, and even an Irish-style red ale from a local brewery.

Duffy’s Cut is close to railroad tracks used by Amtrak and SEPTA, and in 2012, the brothers had to stop digging so they would not disrupt the trains. It seemed the tragic story had finally reached its end.

But for years, the brothers had heard rumors of a second grave site, potentially at Northwood Cemetery.

Some of their research offered tantalizing clues: A newspaper account from 1832 suggested that a laborer ran westward from the cholera outbreak at Duffy’s Cut, toward another Irish worksite further down the tracks, where he infected other workers and then died.

A 1909 history of the region noted about the cemetery: “A number of persons … were buried there, especially the bodies of certain Irish laborers, who died of cholera during the epidemic of 1832. They were employed on the Pennsylvania Railroad and their homes were unknown. These graves lie in the eastern part of the cemetery, near the gully.”

The longtime caretaker of the cemetery often heard stories of a mass grave that was hidden somewhere near his home on the property, said Bill Walton, the volunteer president of Northwood.

The Watson brothers visited the 40-acre cemetery about once a month for four years, hoping to find the site. They dug near the caretaker’s house and near various gullies, without success.

“I never had the heart to tell them no,” Walton said.

It was not until April, when the cemetery cleared a thickly forested outer section of the property in order to improve it, that the researchers were able to use ground-penetrating radar, and then shovels, to pinpoint the right spot.

About 10 inches down, on a steep embankment covered in weeds and leaves, they uncovered the teeth and the jawbone.

“We hit it,” William Watson said. “We actually got the first piece of human remains, from an area that should have no burials in it at all.”

They paused digging to inform the head of the cemetery, as well as the Chester County district attorney and the coroner’s office. They also alerted Matthew Patterson, a forensic dentist who has worked with the team since 2008, to help identify the remains as human.

On a recent morning at Immaculata’s Duffy’s Cut Museum, Patterson laid the teeth and jaw fragment on a table to examine them through surgical telescope glasses.

“I feel a deep sense of respect because a) these are people,” Patterson said. “And b) these are people who didn’t live an easy life, and they didn’t exit the Earth in a very nice way.”

Patterson and the others do not know how many people were buried at the Downingtown site, though there could be up to 120 because that was the size of a typical work crew at the time. They also do not know the cause of death of those buried there.

Over the next few months, the researchers hope to do DNA analysis on the remains, to identify next of kin. They also hope to rebury them properly at Northwood, with the grave sites marked by a Celtic cross.

For now, the site remains mostly hidden, down a steep slope by the whizzing cars of Route 113.

When he visited recently, William Watson marked it with a split branch, its thin limbs pointing skyward.

“It feels,” his brother said, “like sacred ground.”

Update: This story’s headline has been updated to clarify that researchers have found human remains that, along with historical record, serve as evidence of a possible mass grave. They have not yet confirmed the presence of a mass grave.