By Sean O'Driscoll

A CORONER and district attorney are standing by in Pennsylvania as two history professors prepare to dig up 57 Irish railroad workers who they believe were murdered by 19th century anti-Irish bigots. 

The Pennsylvania Police Emerald Society has now pitched in to protect the mass gravesite and is negotiating with Amtrak to allow for more tests on the land where the men are buried. 

Under Pennsylvania law, a coroner and district attorney's office must be contact in suspicious death cases -- even ones that are more than 170 years old. 

Two history professors at Immaculata University in Pennsylvania have made a detailed study of the case, and believe that a railroad corporation may have destroyed files on the deaths to stop the truth from emerging. 

The 57, who died in 1832, are officially listed as cholera victims, but the railroad corporation hid the records for decades. 

The project has become a passion for professors William Watson and John Ahtes of Immaculata College, who have made a huge search of state and national records to uncover the men's identities. A Pennsylvania cemetery has volunteered individual graveyard spaces for all the men when their bodies are exhumed, and Irish graduate students have also been recruited to investigate the men's backgrounds. 

According to Watson, anti-Irish feeling was very strong at the time and the Irish were being blamed for spreading cholera. 

A group of vigilantes was roaming Pennsylvania looking for Irish to attack, particularly when the fear of cholera gripped the wider public in 1832. 

Watson said he believed the Pennsylvania and Columbia Railroad Company might have covered up the deaths to stop bad publicity, and to ensure that Irish workers were not frightened off from building more railroads. 

The office of Rodger Rothenberger, coroner for Chester County where the mass grave is located, confirmed that they had been informed of the research and would help to investigate the causes of the men's deaths.

The 57 are buried at a site called Duffy's Cut, named after an Irish-born foreman who arranged work for the men only weeks before their deaths. 

Watson said he has convinced that the railroad company had hidden the men's deaths from the public. 

"These guys were very deliberately forgotten by the railroad and any record of the men was wiped out," he said.

"We believe we can put this in the history books and we believe we can find the names of these men. We know that they came in June 1832 directly from Ireland. Now it's a matter of finding out who they were."

The Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad never publicly released accounts of the disaster, though accounts of troubled ghosts haunting the mass grave have been passed down in local folklore. 

As late as 1909, the mysterious deaths continued to trouble the rail company. Its then president, Martin Clement, had a stone enclosure built around a nearby site where he believed the men were buried. 

However, he refused to have a memorial built. He also ordered all available information on the men to be taken away and stored in his office. 

Watson believes that Clement, a wealthy man with political ambition, was worried that the scandal might damage the rail company's reputation. 

However, Watson's grandfather, Joseph Tripician, was Clement's assistant and kept the file. Watson discovered it two years ago and became intrigued by the story. 

Watson said that that he still gets choked up when he thinks of the men's lives, and would like to find out their names before they are buried. 

The pair believe they have uncovered the identity of Phillip Duffy, the men's foreman, who appeared to care little for the fate of his men. 

"We believe that Phillip Duffy is from Tipperary," said Watson. 

"We have a document saying that a Philip Duffy came in (to the U.S) after the war of 1812 and we believe this is our man. It's now a matter of time to go through the records and find young men who might have been recruited at the docks by Duffy. 

"We are flushing out his story as well. These men were expendable to him. He didn't care if these men lived and died. It's just incredible," he said.