After 246 years, the identity of an unknown Revolutionary War soldier has been revealed through DNA testing and old-fashioned sleuthing. Pvt. John Pumphrey, a Maryland teenager, died in one of the last big battles of the American Revolution.
Identification Process
Archaeologists surveying the area in 2020 came across human bones protruding from the ground. Eventually, 14 sets of remains were identified — 12 of them Continental soldiers. The remains were examined and cataloged, and samples from two of the soldiers were sent to Astrea Forensics in California for DNA extraction and sequencing.
From a petrous portion of the temporal bone, a delicate structure behind the ear at the base of the skull, they successfully extracted DNA that generated Pumphrey’s entire genome. The data was then uploaded to FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch to trace three types of DNA matches: autosomal, X chromosome and Y chromosome.
Pumphrey’s Life
Pumphrey died Aug. 16, 1780, at the Battle of Camden, South Carolina. He was a young orphan from Maryland’s Anne Arundel County, who enlisted in the militia at the age of 13. Researchers now know Pumphrey and his comrades from the 7th Maryland Regiment were with George Washington in the snows at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Pumphrey’s unit was involved in some of the major contests in the Northern Theater, including the battles of Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth. He had marched 1,000 miles before he met his end in the pinelands of South Carolina.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.
