In March 2003, a letter was written to the president of the East Granby Historical Society by Betty Guinan, local town historian, asking if the Society could help in locating the lost prisoner's cemetery at Newgate Prison. The president knew of my association with Nick and asked if I could help to coordinate such an initiative. (Little did I know what I was getting into!).

Nick was enthusiastic about the project and agreed to visit the site within the next couple of months. It quickly became apparent that the historical documentation about the location of the cemetery was weak and contradictory. We began with the information that the cemetery was somewhere behind the house at 165 Newgate Road in East Granby. On one occasion three elderly residents came out to the site, determined to show us where the cemetery was located, and each went off in a different direction, with no evidence of the cemetery's location. Diplomacy of the highest order had to be implemented. The terrain in back of 165 Newgate Road was much more extensive than at first realized. It consists of open fields, wooded areas, wetlands and electrical power lines cutting diagonally across the property. The area is about ½ mile north of Newgate Prison. Talk about looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

Historical research was ongoing and included work at the East Granby and Granby town halls, State Archives, Connecticut State Library as well as the Connecticut Historical Society. Participants in the research effort were Betty Guinan, East Granby town historian; Roger Thompson, president of FOSA; Bill Keegan; Arend-Jan Knuttle; Stephen Cotton, local land surveyor; Ruth Shapleigh-Brown of the Connecticut Gravestone Network; as well as myself. Helping in the search effort was the discovery of an 1895 photograph of the prison cemetery, as well as a hand drawn map by local resident Clifford Gosslee (now deceased) indicating the approximate location of the cemetery.

By reviewing the history of land deeds of property around the prison, we were able to narrow down potential locations of the prison cemetery. The process was hampered by the growth of heavy vegetation including patches of poison ivy. Several abortive visits were made to the area in back of 165 Newgate Road. We were about to give up on the project until another local native, Ken Seymour, stepped forward to inform the group "we were looking in the wrong spot." I went back to the area with Mr. Seymour and walked the length of a stone wall, which measured 830 feet from Newgate Road going in a westerly direction. (The wall was actually measured by Roger Thompson and myself). The wall became a marker and actually was visible in the 1895 photograph. It looked like we were in business again. Nick and his group of volunteers returned to the site early in the summer of this year [2004] and a cluster of about 20 vertical field-stones were discovered under the vegetation and debris. There were no inscriptions on the stones.

On Friday, August 20th, Nick's army of volunteers descended on the site once again with the focus being on widening and deepening "trench #2." In the early afternoon the first coffin nail was recovered from the soil at approximately 42" depth. This was followed by the discovery of six additional coffin nails at approximately the same depth. The lost cemetery at Newgate prison has been FOUND! Congratulations to Nick, Dave Cooke and numerous members of FOSA, as well as several members of the East Granby Historical Society. Aword of thanks goes out to several staff members of the National Resource Conservation Services, who provided Ground Penetrating Radar on this same date.