Posted on 07/13/2026 5:17:10 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
The boy was around 14 when he joined the Continental Army. He signed his enlistment papers with an “X,” suggesting that he’d never learned to write his name. During his three-and-a-half-year military career, he marched more than 1,000 miles. When he died at the Battle of Camden in South Carolina in 1780, he was buried in an unmarked grave and forgotten for nearly 250 years.
Researchers excavated the boy’s remains in 2022. Now, they’ve discovered this young soldier’s identity: His name was Private John Pumphrey, and he was one of America’s oldest John Doe cases.
“As far as we knew, this was the first time somebody that died in the 1700s had been identified with their genetic genealogy profile,” says Allison Peacock, president of FHD Forensics, a Texas-based company specializing in John Doe investigations.
Recovery efforts at the Camden battlefield began in 2020, when archaeologists surveyed the land with metal detectors. Amid the musket balls and buttons, they noticed two sets of human remains sticking out of the ground. When they investigated further, they found 14 Revolutionary War soldiers buried in shallow graves.
Researchers moved the remains to the Richland County Coroner’s Office, where anthropologists examined them. The team contacted FHD Forensics, which had previously worked with the coroner’s office on modern-day cases.
“They said, ‘We just found a bunch of Revolutionary War soldiers. Do you think you could do what you just did for us on 200-year-old remains?’” Peacock recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, maybe. Let’s try.’”
Experts with Astrea Forensics, a California-based lab that works with ancient DNA, extracted and sequenced DNA from two of the soldiers, including Pumphrey, who was dubbed Camden 9B. The pair’s genetic genealogy profiles were the oldest that the lab had ever created. Peacock’s team uploaded the data to FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch, databases with users who have opted into forensic comparisons. At that point, the researchers weren’t sure whether this experiment would work. So much time had passed, and they feared that the genetic distance between these 18th-century soldiers and Americans alive today might be too great. But when they looked at the databases, they found that Camden 9B was linked to prominent families from Maryland’s Anne Arundel County.
From there, the researchers used several methods to identify the John Doe. Three types of DNA—autosomal, X chromosome and Y chromosome—all pointed to Pumphrey. The team also conducted extensive archival research. Pumphrey’s military records show that he enlisted in the Seventh Maryland Regiment in 1777 and accepted a $100 re-enlistment bonus in 1779. After the Battle of Camden in 1780, he was listed as “missing.”
Later research surfaced additional information about Pumphrey’s roots. His great-grandfather, a carpenter, had moved the family from New Jersey to the Baltimore area around 1713. Both of his parents died when he was a young boy.
“He was orphaned at about age 10, give or take a couple years,” Peacock says. “He really didn’t have an opportunity to leave any record behind, other than his military record.”
By the end of his life, the growth plates around Pumphrey’s knees hadn’t fully closed, suggesting that he was still quite young. Although researchers aren’t sure how he died, “he didn’t have any visible injuries to his skeletal structure, which means it was probably a soft tissue injury—maybe a bayonet,” Peacock says.
Why would such a young boy enlist in the first place? After his father died, a cousin appears to have seized control of his estate, likely leaving Pumphrey and his siblings with few resources. “The earth shifted dramatically under John Pumphrey’s feet,” Peacock writes on her blog. “A young teen from an apparently prosperous family, and once with a bright, predictable future, now had little prospects.”
Now, more than two centuries later, Pumphrey is finally getting his due. He was reburied with full military honors in 2023. He was likely too young to have had children, but researchers have found some 20,000 DNA matches for living relatives. Last month, when the researchers officially announced Pumphrey’s identification, some of his “next of kin”—descendants of his siblings and first cousins—gathered in Baltimore to celebrate his life.
“He has waited almost 246 years for his name to be said out loud again,” Rick Wise, executive director of the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, told the audience, per Maryland Matters. “The blood that ran through his veins is going through yours.”
One of the relatives in attendance was Julie Strickland from Lugoff, South Carolina—not far from the site of the Battle of Camden. “I was born a Pumphrey. I was put up for adoption when I was 6 weeks old and later found both sides of my family,” she told WLTX. “I started out without a name. He wound up without a name. And now we both know our name.”
Probably the descendants of the guy who seemingly screwed him over back then.
"The boy was around 14 when he joined the Continental Army"
Today's 14 year olds are at home playing video games.....
I like these kinds of stories where DNA helps to identify those that need to be identified.
And catching criminals.
However, I’d never WILLINGLY give my DNA to any of those internet sites just for the FUN of it. I really do not care about those that came before me before they left ‘The Old Country’ and came to America. I’m GRATEFUL, but what does it matter, really? That you’re from a long line of Stubborn Swedes? Angry Germans? Your Great Great Grandma ran a Brothel? Great-Great-Great Uncle Bob was a Slave Trader? Who cares?
But that’s just me. I can see the fascination in it for some. Our ‘Crazy Aunt Suzie’ has us traced back to the Huns on one side and the Vikings on the other...or Pirates...or something. Who knows. She might be making it all up for all I know. ;)
Agreed. Kids used to grow up really fast back when all there was for them was misery, hunger and manual labor.
I started working at 12, but just mowing lawns and babysitting, then ‘real’ work at 15 when I could get a work permit. (Retail, Fast Food, etc.) And, of course, Mother Government taking 25% of what *I* earned! “WHO is this ‘FICA Guy’ and why is be taking all of my money?”
Joining the military at 14? Now THAT was brave - but he supposedly had no choice after being orphaned and losing the family fortune to the evil cousin. Poor kid.
Great backstory...and now we all know it and can be grateful that it wasn’t us. ;)
“what does it matter, really?”
Of course, not at all. But I do enjoy tracing family back and contemplating what their lives were like at the places they lived in Poland, Germany, and England.
And if they thought about who would follow them six or seven generations later. Just fun to ponder.
I get it. I do LOVE the story of my Great Grandpa coming here from Germany with his brother in the late 1800’s and meeting his future wife, Emma, when they both worked in a Bakery in NYC.
I have their wedding photo and Emma is a replica of a future me! Uncanny! She has my eyes, my lack of height and my curly hair.
They later moved to Wisconsin because it looked, ‘SO much like HOME.’ And having been stationed in Germany, I totally agree. ;)
I come from German Jew stock. I’m sure my ancestors were just happy to have made it out alive. ;)
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