Staff Reports
The long-lost name of a teenage soldier who died at one of the Revolution’s bloodiest fights has finally been returned. Researchers announced this week that “Camden 9B,” one of 14 sets of remains pulled from the Camden Battlefield, has been positively identified as Private John Pumphrey. It’s the first confirmed identification from the group, and it shows modern science can fix old neglect — even if it took nearly a quarter-millennium to do it.
How scientists gave him back his name
The match came after painstaking forensic work by teams tied to the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, the newly formed Rev War Forensic Institute, and private labs and genealogists including FHD Forensics and Astrea Forensics. Technicians extracted DNA from a skull fragment, used ancient‑DNA sequencing and genomic profiling, then built family trees from public genetic databases. Because Pumphrey left no children, genealogists traced collateral descendants — a long and tricky puzzle that went seven or more generations back. As Allison Peacock, president of FHD Forensics, put it: “It’s incredibly expensive work, it’s incredibly tedious work and it’s incredibly complicated research to go all of the way back to the colonial era.”
Who was John Pumphrey?
Pumphrey was a Maryland teenager from Anne Arundel County who left home for Baltimore and enlisted around 1777. He reenlisted in 1779 “for the duration” and fought with Maryland regiments at Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth before the southern campaign led to Camden. The American force there was overwhelmed, and Pumphrey was among the roughly 400 who died in that defeat. His remains were reburied with ceremony in Camden’s Quaker Cemetery after study, but only now does a name sit on at least one grave instead of an anonymous number.
Why this identification matters — and what it costs
There is real value in naming the unnamed. Valerie Kemp, senior genealogist at FHD Forensics, said the team was “able to give back his name,” a small but powerful restoration of dignity. Yet the work is not cheap or easy. If conservatives care about honoring service and preserving history, we should back this kind of science and the battlefield preservation that makes it possible. The project also shows how private labs, universities and nonprofit preservationists can cooperate to solve problems the government often ignores until someone points a camera at it.
Next steps and a plain‑spoken finish
Project leaders say preliminary genomic profiles exist for other Camden subjects and that work will continue to identify more men from the field. That’s good news — but let it be a lesson. A free society honors its defenders, even the ones who fell long before today’s politics. It took DNA, genealogy and a few brave advocates to fix this one old oversight. Give the scientists their due, put a real name on a real stone, and maybe — just maybe — remember that memory matters more than headlines.
