Pvt. John Pumphrey was an orphan before his age hit double digits.
After losing his parents, something — whether it was his lack of prospects or an inner call to adventure — drew him to enlist in the Continental Army to fight for a dawning nation: the United States of America.
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Though still a young teenager in the late 1770s, Pumphrey might have been able to blend in with the older soldiers around him, given his above-average height for his age, according to researchers who are now telling his story.
Pumphrey marched at least 1,000 miles during his three years of service. His last steps were taken on the battlegrounds of the Battle of Camden, a battle that claimed the lives of more than 1,000 soldiers, Pumphrey included.
For almost 250 years, Pumphrey’s remains were buried underground, leaving Pumphrey a soldier likely never to be identified.
Modern science, however, seems to have a hobby of beating the odds.
Pumphrey was one of 14 Continental soldiers discovered in 2022 by a team of archaeologists from the University of South Carolina.
Since then, archaeologists and forensic scientists have been working on “the investigation of a lifetime” to identify these soldiers, a project that announced major findings just weeks ago.
For Pumphrey, the search produced far more than a name — it revealed the story of his life.
‘He has waited almost 246 years for his name to be said out loud again’
Pumphrey, formerly identified as Camden 9B, a name indicating the site where his shallow grave was discovered, enlisted in the Continental army on Jan. 5, 1777, according to FHD Forensics, a group dedicated to using DNA technology to identify remains.
Scientists estimate that he would have been around the age of 13 to 15 when he joined the 7th Maryland Regiment. His enlistment papers are signed with an “X,” indicating he was illiterate.
Pumphrey’s service lasted a little over three years. Biological anthropologists gauge that he was only 16 to 18, maybe younger, when he died in one of the bloodiest battles of the Revolutionary War.
How do they know? The anthropological examination of his remains showed that at his time of death, the growth plates around both of his knees had not fully closed, according to the researchers.
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Records from that day confirm that Pumphrey went “missing” on the day of the Battle of Camden. The existence of this record is somewhat of a miracle.
“The fact that we have John Pumphrey’s name on any list at all for that day is extremely fortunate,” said Allison Peacock, founder of FHD Forensics, a company that helped with the search. “If not, his memory might have been lost forever.”
Pumphrey’s military records are the only existing records of his life, according to Smithsonian.
By extracting and sequencing DNA samples, searching through historical records from the time and performing extensive genetic genealogy research, scientists working on the project not only discovered Pumphrey’s story, but contacted his living relatives to share it with them.
“He has waited almost 246 years for his name to be said out loud again,” Rick Wise, executive director and military historian at the South Carolina Battlefield Preservation Trust, told a crowd of Pumphrey’s relatives at an event in June where researchers revealed Pumphrey’s identity, as reported by Maryland Matters.
“The blood that ran through his veins is going through yours.”
Research to identify more soldiers continues
Pumphrey was the first of the 14 discovered soldiers to be identified on the Battle of Camden battlegrounds.
“Even as someone who does this work every day … the opportunity to give the gift of knowing this young hero to the entire country as we’re celebrating our 250th birthday as a nation is something that will stick with me for the rest of my life,” Peacock said in an online blog.
“His story was really amazing to me, because it revealed to me someone that was fighting from tyranny, both at home and on the battlefield,” Peacock said later.
Pumphrey is now reburied with military honors in a historical cemetery in South Carolina alongside 11 of his compatriots. Research continues to identify other discovered soldiers.
“It’s almost like a mythology, the Revolution; like a story we all agree happened, but may not feel that it was real,” said James Legg, an archaeologist for the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, in a release.
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“These gravesites made it real.”