USC Researchers Help Identify Teenage War Hero's Remains From Battle of Camden Site

His name was John Pumphrey — approximate age 14 — felled amid musket fire among the towering pines at the Battle of Camden. It’s taken nearly 250 years to identify him using DNA technology and public databases.

The quest to identify Pumphrey and 13 other Revolutionary War soldiers recovered in a 2022 excavation, led by Steven D. Smith of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at USC, is ongoing. Genetic genealogy firm FHD Forensics conducted analysis of a skull fragment to positively identify Pumphrey.

Buried in a shallow grave, Pumphrey was traced to a prominent family in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. He was a private with the 7th Maryland Regiment of the Continental Army. The Battle of Camden was considered the bloodiest battle of the war.

In 2024, all of the soldiers were reinterred in the historic Quaker Cemetery adjacent to the battlefield site, with full military honors.