Remains of teen soldier who died in Battle of Camden identified 246 years later (SC)
SC Battlefield Preservation Trust helped complete Maryland teen’s story
SC Battlefield Preservation Trust helped complete Maryland teen’s story
(Southern Partisan) - A Texas-based forensics company has solved a vexing mystery, identifying the long-buried remains of a Revolutionary War soldier — who turned out to be a teenager from Anne Arundel County.
And in his home county Thursday, surrounded by a host of his descendants, they told his story.
John Pumphrey was between 13 and 15 years old when he joined the 7th Maryland regiment of the Continental Army to fight British troops. He fell at South Carolina’s Battle of Camden on Aug. 16, 1780, a devastating defeat that left more than 1,000 American troops dead.
The scientists at FHD Forensics, the company that made the discovery, believe that their investigation is unique. While researchers have exhumed Revolutionary War era remains for study, they have never before unearthed unknown remains and identified them, said Allison Peacock, founder and president of FHD Forensics.
“Nobody’s ever identified a 246-year-old John Doe before,” Peacock said.
Archaeologists found Pumphrey, who would have been 16 to 18 years old at the time he died, alongside several other soldiers in a shallow, unmarked grave at the battlefield in 2022.
Though more than 240 years had passed, researchers were able to recover DNA evidence from Pumphrey’s petrous bone, a uniquely hard inch-long bone at the base of the skull, behind the ear.
“The teeth are usually the best, because they’re protected in the jaw, but this…