DNA from bones on a Revolutionary War battlefield solves the case of ‘America’s oldest John Doe’

Revolutionary War Soldier Identified Through Ancient DNA and Genealogical Research

DNA from bones on a Revolutionary – After nearly two and a half centuries of being lost to history, a young Maryland soldier who perished during one of the American Revolution’s final major engagements has finally been identified. Through a combination of modern DNA analysis and traditional archival research, Pvt. John Pumphrey can now claim his rightful position in the annals of American history. The timing of this discovery proves particularly meaningful, arriving just as the nation prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary.

Allison Peacock, who established FHD Forensics and assisted with the identification effort, expressed her satisfaction with the outcome. “There was a sense of divine timing, I guess,” she remarked. “I don’t know what else you want to call it.”

The Battle of Camden and the Discovery of Remains

Pumphrey fell on August 16, 1780, during the Battle of Camden in South Carolina. This engagement represented one of the Continental Army’s most crushing losses, with British forces commanded by Gen. Charles Lord Cornwallis overwhelming patriot troops led by Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates. Of approximately 900 soldiers who died in the conflict, many remained where they fell, exposed to wild animals, intense heat, and South Carolina’s oppressive humidity.

Archaeologists conducting surveys of the battlefield in 2020 uncovered human skeletal remains emerging from the earth. Over time, researchers identified fourteen distinct sets of remains, twelve belonging to Continental soldiers while the remaining two were attributed to British forces and subsequently reburied at the site.

The Richland County Coroner’s Office, which had previously collaborated with Texas-based FHD Forensics on contemporary cases, requested assistance with this historical mystery. Peacock began referring to the unidentified soldier as “America’s oldest John Doe.”

Challenges of Ancient DNA Extraction

“What we did is pretty much the same as what we do with any other John Doe case,” Peacock explained. “Nobody really knew for sure whether we could get genetic profiles suitable for a genealogy investigation on 240-plus year old remains. But we got lucky.”

Unlike most of the fallen soldiers, Pumphrey and four fellow soldiers received a basic burial beneath a thin covering of soil. He received the designation “Camden 9B,” indicating he was the second set of remains recovered from burial number nine. After examination and cataloging, the twelve Continental soldiers were reinterred with full military honors. Pumphrey’s headstone bore only the inscription: “UNKNOWN. REV WAR. BATTLE OF CAMDEN. AUG 16 1780.”

Samples from two soldiers were transported to Astrea Forensics in California for DNA extraction and sequencing. Kelly Harkins Kincaid, co-founder and scientific adviser at Astrea, noted the challenges involved. “Typically, in a case like this, we work with teeth, because teeth are in the jaw and are protected, the roots are protected,” she stated. “In this case, they were just coming up with nothing on the teeth.”

Kincaid explained that ancient remains often struggle with contamination. “It gets colonized by the microbial environment in the soil and the water in the environment,” she said. Despite having worked with samples dating back 10,000 years, this represented the oldest material her company had ever attempted to use for family tree reconstruction.

Genealogical Breakthrough and Historical Portrait

From the petrous portion of the temporal bone—a delicate structure located behind the ear at the skull’s base—researchers successfully extracted three types of DNA: autosomal, X chromosome, and Y chromosome. Peacock’s team submitted these results to FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch platforms.

“We got 20,000 matches to work with,” she said. “So, it was a lot to kind of comb through.”

Among those matches was Russ Hudson, a retired federal agent residing in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who connected through the maternal line. Hudson volunteered to conduct archival research, helping to build a profile of a young orphan from Maryland’s Anne Arundel County who had been dispossessed and was searching for direction in life.

“I learned that probably when he was 13, he went to Baltimore and he enlisted in the militia,” Hudson noted. “And who knows what his story was? What did he accomplish in order to become a member of the militia at such a young age?”

Without a surviving birth record, researchers cannot determine Pumphrey’s exact age when he entered military service. He signed his re-enlistment documents with an “X” mark. However, Peacock observed that his growth plates around the knees had not yet fully closed at death, confirming his youth.

Current research indicates that Pumphrey and his comrades from the 7th Maryland Regiment accompanied George Washington through the harsh winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. His unit participated in several significant Northern Theater engagements, including the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth. Peacock estimates he traveled approximately 1,000 miles before meeting his fate in South Carolina’s pine forests.

“We don’t really know what John Pumphrey’s cause of death was because they did not find a particular injury on his body,” she said. “It’s possible that he had a soft tissue injury, like a bayonet injury, but the evidence remains inconclusive.”