The milestojone in the long research project is a bittersweet end for a team that has been investigating the workers' death since 2002. That year Watson, and his twin brother, the Rev. Frank Watson, also a historian and co-director, read a secret file left to them by their grandfather who had been a private secretary to the president of what was then the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Information in the file about the men and the burial site led to woods near Sugartown and King Roads in East Whiteland Township.
What the research team pieced together was the story of 57 men who emigrated from Ireland in 1832, arrived in Chester County to work on the railroad, and died about eight weeks later, most of cholera. A woman, likely a washer woman who cared for the men at the work camp, died with them.
The findings also indicated something sinister, the likelihood of violence. Five skulls unearthed in a burial ground near the mass grave, on a site believed to be the workers' encampment, show signs of blunt trauma, researchers say. One of the skulls has a hole that might be from a bullet.
Researchers say they believe some of the workers were the victims of violence rooted in prejudice and the fear of the spread of cholera.
Their lives unfolded at a time when immigrant workers were outsiders in local communities and at the mercy of the local contractors who hired them, said Walter Licht, a University of Pennsylvania professor and a railroad historian. Incidents of "tension, mayhem, and disorder" were not uncommon, Licht said.
The research team had sought not only to tell the workers' story, but to give them a proper burial.
In September, the investigation took a turn.
