JULY 18, 2026
DNA from Revolutionary War battlefield bones identifies soldier buried for 246 years as Pvt. John Pumphrey
Forensic scientists used DNA extracted from bones discovered at the Battle of Camden battlefield to identify a Revolutionary War soldier as Pvt. John Pumphrey of Maryland, 246 years after his death on August 16, 1780. Archaeologists first found the remains protruding from the ground during a 2020 survey, and the case was referred to as "America's oldest John Doe." A ceremony was held last month at a historic site in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, where relatives of Pumphrey wept upon learning his identity.
The Battle of Camden, fought in South Carolina on August 16, 1780, was one of the Continental Army's most devastating defeats. British Gen. Charles Lord Cornwallis routed patriot forces under Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates, and roughly 900 soldiers were killed, many left where they fell. Among them was a young, orphaned teenager from Maryland's Anne Arundel County who had enlisted in the militia at around age 13 and signed his re-enlistment papers with an "X."
When archaeologists surveying the Camden battlefield in 2020 found human bones protruding from the ground, they eventually cataloged 14 sets of remains — 12 identified as Continental soldiers, with the others determined to be British and reburied on site. The Maryland soldier, tagged "Camden 9B," had received only a thin-layer burial. He and the other identified Continentals were later reinterred with full military honors; his headstone read simply: "UNKNOWN. REV WAR. BATTLE OF CAMDEN. AUG 16 1780."
The Richland County Coroner's Office engaged Texas-based FHD Forensics, whose founder Allison Peacock had experience with modern John Doe cases. Samples were sent to Astrea Forensics in California for DNA extraction. Teeth, typically the preferred source for ancient DNA, yielded nothing; scientists instead extracted autosomal, X chromosome, and Y chromosome DNA from the petrous portion of the temporal bone — a dense structure behind the ear at the base of the skull. Astrea co-founder Kelly Harkins Kincaid noted that remains this old are heavily colonized by microbial material from soil and water, making extraction difficult. It was the oldest sample Astrea had attempted to use to reconstruct a family tree, though Kincaid has worked with DNA as old as 10,000 years.