♪♪ [ Gunshots ] -August 1780.

4,000 American Patriots confront 2,000 British soldiers on a battlefield in Camden, South Carolina.

-Camden was the worst tactical defeat of a Continental-led army in the American Revolution.

-After less than an hour of fierce combat, hundreds lay dead or wounded.

-This civil war was Loyalist against Patriot, neighbor against neighbor, father against son.

It was vicious.

It was brutal.

-Almost 250 years later, archaeologists uncover the remains of 14 fallen soldiers.

-These individuals were tossed in and hastily buried.

-It's not a surprise you'd scoop your shovel and all of a sudden there's bones.

-Now, the search for the identity of the men who fought and fell in the Battle of Camden begins.

-Almost half the Continental soldiers were teenagers, and as a mother of teenage boys, that really hits close to home.

-Is it possible to put a name to any of the soldiers who were recovered?

-This is the oldest John Doe identification of that time.

-Using exclusive access to DNA from the remains... -These remains were so fragile that just touching them could make them turn to what felt like dust.

-...and professional genealogical research... -We can see he has a very clear connection to the Inverness region of Scotland.

-...can the heroes from the Battle of Camden be identified?

-Here we are, a little over a year after we started.

I guess y'all are kind of wondering what his name is.

♪♪ ♪♪ This program was made possible in part by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina; by the National Endowment for the Humanities, "Democracy demands wisdom"; and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪ -Just 200 feet from Flat Rock Road, in Camden, South Carolina, lie the remains of soldiers who died in one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolution.

They have been lying where they fell, just inches below the ground, for more than two centuries.

-Everybody who was killed there is still there.

There was no removal.

There are no national cemeteries or repatriation or anything else.

-None of these graves were ever preserved.

-The place had been relic-hunted to death for 25 years probably before any legitimate archaeology was undertaken.

-They're looking for the musket balls and the buttons and all those kind of really cool things that you can find.

However, I don't think they consider that all those things are connected to people.

[ Indistinct conversation ] -I was the first person to investigate Camden as an archaeologist.

-Jim Legg, from the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, has been interested in the site since the early 1980s.

-Well, I did have specific information that there were human remains on the site from collectors that I spoke with.

In 2020, during my COVID vacation, I got a very deep metal detector reading, so that made me suspicious that it might be a burial.

And I cleaned the bottom of my little metal detector hole and there was a human femur running through the bottom of the hole, so that was indeed a burial.

Ever since I knew that there were burials out there, I thought it might be a good idea to have a substantial professional project to investigate these burials.

♪♪ -A total of six burial sites were identified.

And in 2022, a project was launched to recover the remains.

-We were asked by the South Carolina Battleground Trust to recover the burials we knew about.

-We're the only non-profit in South Carolina that preserves South Carolina's battlegrounds and military sites.

-The goal being to get them out of the ground, do a quick scientific investigation and rebury them properly with full military honors.

-Historic Camden is the custodian of the site, and for Stacey Ferguson it's an important part of their conservation mission.

-So, we take great pains, of course.

We feel duty-bound to the soldiers that are the hundreds of soldiers that are still buried there, um, to take excellent care of -- of the battlefield.

-Facilitated by Historic Camden, the team from the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology was joined by forensic anthropologists from the Richland County Coroner's Office.

-Typically, we respond to cases involving relatively recent deaths, exhuming remains that have been buried in the cases of homicides, these sorts of things.

-We wanted to treat it like a crime scene.

And we wanted to make sure that we got every piece of evidence out of the ground.

And both of the archaeologists and the forensic anthropologists have that kind of expertise.

-So, our role was to oversee the exhumation to make sure that it was done ethically to identify the human skeletal remains, differentiate between human and faunal or animal remains, determine things like minimum number of individuals, how many people are in this grave.

-The burials that we found and knew about were very shallow.

In fact, one of the individuals, in the process of excavating him, we realized that his femurs were sticking above the ground.

-What we didn't realize was how many of those areas were going to be multiple bodies.

So, we thought we were probably exhuming six soldiers and we ended up exhuming 14.

[ Indistinct conversation ] -But who were these fallen soldiers?

Were they Patriots or British?

And what do their remains reveal about the people who fought and died for America's right to be an independent nation?

-Our goal as forensic anthropologists is to figure out, you know, who this person was and what was their life like and what happened to them, what resulted in their death, kind of telling the stories that are inscribed on the skeleton.

-They'd had 240-odd years of insects and roots and worms and freezing and thawing.

-These remains were so fragile that just touching them could make them turn to what felt like dust, so I think that was the biggest surprise and the biggest scare as well.

-Artifacts found among the human remains make it possible to identify 12 of the 14 as Continental soldiers -- men who were part of America's new regular army.

-Do you want me to get this button out for you there?

-I'd feel honored.

-They all had the same distinctive buttons bearing the name of a country that didn't yet exist.

-The use of USA on military equipment, that's really something that was an aspiration.

It was a statement of intent.

It was not an accomplishment.

It was like, "Here's what we'd like to do."

You know, get rid of the king and establish a republic and so forth.

-Although the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, it would not become a reality until the war was won.

-I've often had the thought that the men who were killed there, the Continentals who were killed there, could be forgiven for having thought in their last breaths they might have thought, "This thing isn't going to work out."

-The American Revolution begins in 1775.

Thirteen British colonies in North America fight to win their independence.

By 1780, the conflict has reached a stalemate in the north and the British turn their attention south, to the Carolinas.

Here, they expect more Loyalist support among the local population.

In May, British General Clinton captures the city of Charleston, South Carolina's capital, a major port that could serve as a strategic base.

-The British, uh, should be thinking pretty good things of themselves.

They're successful with the capture of Charleston, captured the entire Southern Army.

The British are very, very high in morale.

-There are no trained Patriot forces in the area to defend the Carolinas from the British.

General Horatio Gates is put in charge of assembling a new Continental Army.

-General Gates had a good background.

His background was more logistics.

And so, when the war kicks in, he kind of comes forward and say, "Hey, I've got all this experience."

-Gates was born in Britain.

He served in the British Army during the French and Indian Wars in the 1750s alongside colonists like George Washington.

But he became disillusioned with his prospects.

-Because he'd not received the preferment as they would've called it, the promotions, he thought he deserved, then resigns his commission, moves to the colonies, and when the rebellion begins, actually makes a decision to be actively against Britain.

-Gates had served the Patriot cause with distinction.

In 1777, he forced British troops to surrender at Saratoga, a victory that many saw as a turning point in the war.

-A new army is formed by the Patriots with General Gates leading them.

And he's marching south with new soldiers to fight the British.

-Gates assembles his army in North Carolina.

Regular Continental soldiers who have marched south from New Jersey are joined by local militia raised in Virginia and North Carolina.

These militia units are made up of civilians.

Both sides recruit from the local population whose support for one side or the other is crucial to who might eventually win.

-This civil war was Loyalist against Patriot, neighbor against neighbor, father against son.

I mean, it was -- it was vicious.

It was brutal.

A lot of people became a Loyalist because they were always a Loyalist.

There was no question, you know.

"My granddaddy, uh, supported the king."

He fought in the army, he did whatever, and they were gonna support the king.

"I received a land grant from the king, therefore I cannot turn my back on the king.

You know, he gave me the prosperity that I have."

-Many of those who joined the Patriot cause were not fighting to defend what they had but risking it all for an idea.

-Fire!

-And then there were others that, quite frankly, uh, they gave up their wealth, their prosperity, their livelihood, and in many cases, their lives because they had a greater concept that they wanted to try to achieve.

And that was an independent nation.

-Gates' army now has the numbers needed to mount military operations.

His plan is to take up a defensive position near the British and support local Patriot militias while threatening British supply lines.

But his troops' own supplies are dwindling.

-And so his army is threadbare.

His army is starving.

Uh, as a matter of fact, when he said, "we'll be prepared to march in in a day or so," uh, one of his officers said, "Sir, we're starving."

And he said, "We can either starve here or starve somewhere else."

-Gates' army is headed into country where there are no supplies to be had along the way.

-So, there's a 17-day march in which they're approaching Camden, South Carolina, and they're subsisting on green peaches, green corn, and brown water.

So, these guys, you know, in a very, very debilitated state.

-At the same time, the British set up camp at Camden, the oldest inland town in South Carolina.

-So, Camden was founded by Scots-Irish Quakers, uh, in the early 1700s.

It had a pretty large population for its -- for its time and for the backcountry of South Carolina.

-Its location at the intersection of the Great Wagon Road and the Wateree River make it a stopping point on key trade routes.

A town ledger from the mid-1700s still exists and paints a picture of a thriving small town.

-It's a really fascinating look at the commerce going on in Camden during the 1700s.

So, for instance I'm looking here and I'm seeing Jamaica rum, sugar.

You also see things such as spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, coffee.

-It was ideal for keeping an army well supplied.

-The reason they're here is we're the breadbasket.

We have mills, we can feed people, and it's where they can stage the invasion of the Carolinas.

-Taking over a Georgian mansion as their headquarters, they built fortifications, barracks, and a military hospital.

In 2026, a new archaeological team began exploring the site of the British camp.

-So, where we're standing at the moment, we're inside what would've been the 1780, 1781 British encampment within Camden.

My name is Stephen Humphreys.

I'm the Chief Executive Officer of American Veterans Archaeological Recovery.

So, I'm the lead investigator on both the battlefield study that we're doing and the excavation that we're doing.

If you look at this map, which is from 1781, this sketch, uh, you can see we would be standing roughly in this area here.

Now, what we're doing here is we're running ground-penetrating radar across the entirety of this area in order to pick up anomalies in the ground.

And we're then doing excavation on a minor scale in order to ground truth those anomalies, so that we can really start talking about how the British lived while they were here.

-The finds from the site tell a surprising story about British army life at Camden.

-It seems as if they did have a taste for the finer things even while they were in this environment.

Here you've got at least one, um, really nice ware ceramic vessel.

You've got a glass bottle, a glass cup here, which is fascinating.

I mean, this looks like it could be modern.

Um, it's not, but the type of material that come out, I think that's, that's colonial, I think a lot of people are surprised at just how modern and how high-end this stuff looks.

-The British meet little resistance when they arrive in Camden.

-There were areas where there were strong Loyalist and strong rebel support.

Camden was probably mostly Loyalist.

It wasn't a big deal to walk into Camden by Cornwallis and settle down there.

-British forces in the Carolinas are now under the command of General Lord Cornwallis.

But he has mixed feelings about the war.

-Cornwallis was a nobleman, a member of the House of Lords, one of five out of a hundred members of the House of Lords to actively speak against trying to put down the rebellion.

He actually wants the rebellion to succeed.

He sees it as being a fair cause, but when told that he will command an army and he will fight against them, then he knows basically that's his duty, and he does it, I suspect at times, unwillingly.

-Cornwallis has just over 2,000 men available for the coming battle.

Some are volunteer units raised in the Americas, but most are professional British soldiers that include battle-hardened regiments.

General Gates' army outnumbers the British two to one, but the majority are volunteer militia.

These men may be committed to the Patriot cause and are often effective guerrilla fighters but they lack the training and discipline needed for formal battle.

-You're wondering if you'll be able to stand and fight.

Will I have it within myself to be able to do what I should do?

Will I chicken out?

Will I run?

-However, uniform buttons found in the graves provided clear evidence that the uncovered remains belonged to regular soldiers, not militiamen.

These men were already veterans of battles fought against the British in the northern colonies.

But close examination of the bones revealed something unexpected.

-One of the most surprising discoveries I think right off the bat was the discovery of unfused epiphyses or unfused growth plates which immediately indicated that some of these individuals were not yet fully grown, so kind of having the sobering realization that there were children and teenagers involved.

-Men who were 14 or 15 were considered adults.

They were already embarking on their trade, whatever it was.

They were getting married.

The concept that a 14- or 15-year-old was a child is a very recent creation.

-Records have revealed that at least one of these teenagers who fought at Camden was African-American.

Jacob Jeffers was a free man fighting for liberty.

The Continental Army was not segregated, something rarely depicted in historical paintings produced in the 19th and 20th centuries.

-Well, intellectually we knew that young people were serving in the Continental lines throughout the war.

But to see it up close and to see it to be real, archaeology, the power of archaeology is it makes things real.

It's not an abstract thing.

Every time we exposed a burial, it became emotional.

-From the burial location on the battlefield, the team was able to conclude these teenage soldiers were part of the Maryland line, one of the most accomplished, disciplined, and reliable fighting forces in the Continental Army.

-The Maryland division was exceptional.

Uh, they fought in all the major battles in the north.

Uh, one of the key engagements that they were in was, of course, the actions around New York.

-The Maryland division was famed for its heroic rearguard action at the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776.

-They sustained heavy, heavy casualties.

But it enabled the Army to get away to include George Washington.

If Washington had been killed or captured, that probably would've been it for the war.

So, they very literally saved the Continental Army on a few occasions.

-Military records show that some of the soldiers who lost their lives at Camden had already proven their courage in the North.

-Well, by the time Camden came along, they were veterans, even though they were teenagers.

They had seen a lot of combat.

They had seen a lot of difficult times, both in living through winter encampments and marching south without any food.

They were in pretty bad shape by the time the Battle of Camden occurred.

-By the night of August 12th, Gates' forces are just 15 miles north of Camden, and the general is searching for the right place to establish his position.

-The night that we're talking about Gates, uh, is actually trying to reposition to Saunders Creek.

It will be a better defensive position for him.

It gives them a better chance to fight in a way that would best suit them.

So that's his intent as he's marching that night.

-On the same night, at the same time, aware of the approaching soldiers, British General Cornwallis sends his troops toward the Continental Army.

-So, his intent was to go in and hit the Continentals and the militia and, uh, and have the first, uh, attack and also be able to gain the initiative.

So, he is going to march.

It's August in South Carolina, so it's best if you march at night.

It's cooler, plus his objective was to hit right at daylight, so marching at night makes sense.

Two opposing forces approaching from opposite sides on the same road, and they're gonna make contact about 2:30 in the morning.

-The Patriot army is ordered to march in silence.

-If anyone made noise, commanders were authorized to kill them on the spot.

So therefore, I'm pretty sure it was a quiet march as they're doing that, but up front, there are shadows, and you hear "Halt.

Who's there?"

-They're face to face with the British army, who open fire.

-So, 20 of them fire their pistols, boom.

In the middle of the night, all of a sudden, you have this echoing of sound.

[ Gunfire ] And then it's followed by charge, charge, charge.

And everyone has drawn their sabers by this time.

And there's the clash of steel.

There are horses whinnying and men yelling, all this going on simultaneously.

-General Gates has been taken by surprise.

-General Gates finds out from prisoners and other folks that he's got Lord Cornwallis in front of him.

When he finds that out, he has now got to make a decision if he's gonna stand and fight or retreat.

-Gates' original plan is in tatters.

He decides he will fight, but neither side wants a battle at night, so they wait until morning.

-It was a waiting game as they waited for daylight.

And for the British, it was not so much of a problem.

They were very experienced troops.

Cornwallis' order was sleep on your arms.

So, in their formation, they spread out, they go to sleep, they rest for about two hours.

-The Patriot army, suffering from hunger, sickness and fatigue, is not resting as easily.

-That had to be an extremely nervous time for them.

I can imagine the NCOs and officers trooping the line -- "Be sure to take your time when you load.

Don't drop your musket ball.

Hey, listen for our commands," those things to settle their nerves.

-As dawn breaks, the two armies prepare for battle.

The Continental artillery fires the first shots on the British infantry massing in front of them.

The Battle of Camden has begun.

[ Gunfire ] The standard weapon for most troops was a smooth-bore musket.

The muskets had limited range and were highly inaccurate.

Soldiers were trained to use their weapons for volley fire at enemy formations rather than pick individual targets.

-Warfare at the end of the 18th century is very much based on linear tactics.

You need to have lines of men, two, normally three deep at this period, actually all firing at once so as to get as many bullets as possible, or musket balls, going down range.

-Soldiers were drilled to be as efficient as possible at the laborious process of loading their muskets.

-The soldier reaches into his leather pouch, takes out a cartridge, like this.

What happens is the soldier, when he is recruited, is required to have good side teeth.

So that he's able to bite the top of the cartridge off, spit the top out, pour some into the pan here.

Close the frizzen over it to protect it from rain or being blown away.

Then upend the musket... ...and pour the rest of the powder down the bore, then the ball and the paper containing it on top of it, and ram rod out... ...drive the whole lot hard down into the breach.

Now we go to full cock and as we pull the trigger, the flint will fly into the frizzen there, so you get the initial flash, and then it goes through to the main charge.

Main charge detonates.

Ball is sent down towards the target.

[ Crack ] -The percentage of musket balls that were fired and found a target would have been very low.

Spent ammunition makes up more than 95% of the artifacts recovered from the battlefield.

Stephen Humphreys can tell by the caliber which side they belong to.

-So, what we've got here are a couple of American balls.

This one has been fired, and we know that because it has a ram rod mark on it, which means it has been rammed down into a firearm and presumably has exited the firearm because we didn't find it inside a firearm, of course.

This one is particularly interesting.

This is a British ball.

This calculates to 0.7 caliber.

Uh, so we think it came out of a British Brown Bess, but the interesting thing about this particular ball is that it does have fabric patterning on it.

So, the only reason you really would have something like this is if it went through cloth.

So obviously our conclusion there is that this was probably fired by a British soldier, probably impacted an American soldier.

Obviously the fate of that individual will never be known.

Um, but with a ball, a lead ball of this size going at the velocities they went at that time, um, uh, definitely wouldn't have been a pleasant experience.

Likely would've been, uh, badly damaging or fatal.

-Both sides place their best soldiers on the right of their line, but Gates only has his militias to occupy the center and left.

-Now you have the best infantry in the world going up against raw militia.

Cornwallis was probably licking his chops.

He was like, "Yes, this is a good thing.

We can do this."

-As clouds of gunsmoke obscure the battlefield, the British begin their advance.

-At least one account said that you could see no more than about 20 feet.

So that adds to the psychological aspects as you have bayonets coming out of the gloam of darkness, literally out of the fog of war to attack these folks.

And they're yelling, "Huzzah, huzzah," particularly against militia who have never faced this type of thing.

That was a major psychological moment.

A few men fire, most seeing the bayonets coming to them, and these folks do not have bayonets of their own turn and ran.

Most of the militia on this side ran without firing a shot.

-The Continental defeat at Camden was largely caused by the militiamen abandoning their posts.

As they drop their weapons and run, the other units are left unsupported.

But some troops, including the Marylanders, stand firm and take the brunt of the casualties suffered that day.

Despite now being heavily outnumbered, they drive back repeated British attacks and even mount their own assaults on the British line.

The battle is now being fought at the point of the bayonet.

-It was savage.

Soldier goes down, use the butt of your, uh, musket, use your bayonet, and then you go to the next man.

All this has taken place, and slowly the first brigade is getting pushed all the way back here to the road.

And as they're doing that on the west side, bayonet attacks back and forth.

It is savage.

It is brutal.

-Stacey and Stephen are examining remarkable finds from the battlefield that shed light on what happened.

-So, what you see here is a gun barrel, and then this is a bayonet.

Now, both of these were found back in the 1960s and '70s.

The socket bayonet was made so that they could put it on the end of a musket and still fire the musket.

-At this point, Cornwallis unleashes his reserves, putting more pressure on the die-hard Patriots.

These soldiers include a regiment recruited from Scotland's Highland clans who have a reputation for ferocity.

-The 71st Regiment of Foot are actually recruited from people who would've been very, very hardy.

They would've had a hard farming life and ready -- really, putting them into combat really wouldn't worry them too much.

-Despite the overwhelming pressure, the Continentals fight hard and inflict significant casualties on the British.

Of the 14 sets of human remains recovered from the battlefield so far, two of them have been identified as casualties from the British side.

But it's clear they had very different backgrounds.

-There was a Loyalist, militia member, and we believe that he is a Loyalist militia member because he didn't have any kind of military accoutrements which you would find on the Continental soldiers.

And also based on where he was found, which was in among the British lines, that they assumed he was fighting with the British.

-The heritage of this Loyalist reveals the complex allegiances at play during the war.

-So, the Loyalist militia member is a Native American.

The anthropologist could tell by looking at the shape of his teeth that he had a particular type of incisor tooth that is predominant amongst Native Americans.

-During the Revolutionary War, some Native American tribes fought with the British, hoping that a victory would limit colonial expansion into their land.

Once identified as Native American, this fallen soldier's remains were returned to the Catawba Nation.

Meanwhile, the archaeologists were ensuring the other 13 sets of human remains were also treated with care and respect.

-We exhumed those soldiers.

We really took a lot of care in giving it the reverence it deserved.

The skulls were carried to the vehicles by a veteran.

And we had several veterans on the team, myself included.

-When America asked people to show up, these guys came.

And so they deserve everything that we are trying to do for them.

-We moved all those remains to the coroner's vehicles, We all stopped.

We had a moment of silence.

We shared a toast.

-Hip, hip!

-Huzzah!

-As the battle enters its final moments, the remaining Patriots are in a desperate situation.

Eventually, a gap appears in the Patriot line and, seeing an opportunity, Cornwallis orders the Loyalist cavalry, led by British General Banastre Tarleton, to charge.

The remaining Patriots are finally broken and forced to flee, pursued by Tarleton's men.

-Cavalry is very, very important if the enemy are broken because they're gonna be faster than anybody on foot.

And that period after the enemy are broken, was given a single descriptive word.

It was known as the execution.

That's when you could slaughter them, and seeing cavalry pursuing you would turn a well-organized army into a rabble in seconds.

-After exhumation, some of the remains were sent to see if any DNA could be recovered, a challenge given the state of preservation.

And forensic anthropologists X-rayed the remains to find out more about who they belonged to and how they died at Camden.

-So, burial 13 consisted of three individuals between the age of 15 to 19 years old.

And one of them is probably our only individual which we can say for certain that we know how he died.

So, this is an X-ray of burial 13A demonstrating the musket ball that was lodged in the lower spine, the lumbar spine of this particular individual.

An injury -- a musket ball lodged into the lower spine -- is at the very least going to cause paralysis of the individual if not result in death.

-While the team was able to ascertain a cause of death for this individual, hundreds more died from injuries that would never have shown up on X-rays.

-Many men were incapacitated and then perhaps, you know, attacked with sabers or penetrated, stabbed with bayonets.

-There were variations on what we saw in terms of battle injuries.

If you died of a -- of a bayonet wound, you weren't going to see that on the skeletal remains.

-A single burial was quickly identified as a British soldier.

He turned out to be a member of the Highland regiment, who played their part in the later stages of the battle.

-They found a belt buckle that says 71st on it.

So, they knew exactly where he came from -- 71st Regiment of Foot.

-Most of his coat buttons, unlike a lot of British regimental regalia, these were just plain buttons with a little 71 in the middle.

-When compared with other graves, the Highlander was buried more carefully, hinting that he was treated with a greater respect.

-Most of the bodies that we found were about eight inches under the dirt.

They're just thrown in on top of each other.

When you compare and contrast those hasty, shallow graves, all of them unmarked, of course, with the Highlander's grave, he was -- he was down about 30 inches, a proper burial, particularly for that environment.

-He was in a formal grave.

He was laid out in the normal Christian burial fashion, feet together, hands over his abdomen.

-This guy, I believe he was buried by his own men because they took the time and the effort to bury him.

-By examining his X-rays, the forensic anthropologists were able to create a portrait of this soldier.

-This is the lower jaw, the mandible of our 71st Highlander.

And you can see here a divot, a facet of wear probably caused by carrying a clay pipe in his mouth habitually in one location that wore the surface of the teeth.

This is the left femur from our Highland soldier, and it is very complete, probably the only bone of the Camden 14 soldiers to not be fractured in at least one location.

-The Highlander's remains also revealed a major injury sustained in battle.

-He had probably experienced blunt force trauma to his skull.

So, it could have been a blow from behind to the skull that he suffered.

The skull unfortunately was incomplete, but there was enough there to say, you know, and view it radiographically and grossly and estimate that it's likely due to blunt force.

-And the evidence points to him being a daunting presence on the battlefield.

-His body mass, his muscularity, exceeded everyone on the battlefield of the 14 we had.

The muscle attachment sites on his well-preserved bones were broad.

He was not a tall man.

He was average height for his day but muscular.

He was an intimidating person on the battlefield that day.

-And the Highlander's bones provide even more information after a viable DNA sample is extracted.

Historic Camden asked genealogy company Ancestry if they could uncover this man's identity by combining both the DNA and documentary research.

-DNA inside bones and teeth is particularly well protected from the environment.

So, the petrous bone is the bone behind the ear.

It's one of the hardest bones in the body and it's great for retrieving DNA from ancient remains.

-The sequenced DNA could be matched against a reference panel of 185,000 individuals, representing 146 global regions.

The results revealed this man's origins with precise detail.

For the purposes of this research, he's been nicknamed "Individual One."

-So, Individual One is very clearly shown as a Scottish man.

And this reinforces what we already knew from the belt buckle tip.

In the case of Individual One, we can see he has a very clear connection to the Inverness region of Scotland.

This is the exact area where the 71st Regiment of Foot was recruited.

-The men of the 71st were recruited from specific clans and localities, people who shared countless generations of genetic heritage that can be seen in their DNA.

Dr.

Doyle was able to trace contemporary links between this regiment and Nova Scotia, in present-day Canada.

-So, after the Revolutionary War many of the men who served in the 71st would have settled in Canada.

Many of them never returned back to Scotland.

In the case of Individual One, we know he's Scottish.

But he's also showing what we call and ancestral journey to Nova Scotia and West Cape Breton Island and we know now he has genetic cousins still living in this area today.

-Individual One's careful burial suggests he may well have been an officer.

To uncover more about his identity, and possibly a name, Dr.

Doyle has found documents that list the casualties from the Battle of Camden.

-So, this is a newspaper article.

It's a return of the killed, wounded and missing of the troops under the command of Lieutenant General Earl Cornwallis in the battle fought near Camden in South Carolina on the 16th of August 1780.

It's a list of all the dead and injured soldiers.

And if you see here, for our purposes, what's really interesting is it talks about the first battalion of the 71st Regiment.

So, at the bottom of this list, they actually name the officers who died.

And if you look here, it says of the 1st Battalion, 71st Regiment, Lieutenant Archibald Campbell -- killed.

There's a reasonable chance that Individual One is Archibald Campbell, specifically this Lieutenant Archibald Campbell of the 1st Battalion, 71st Regiment.

-Advances in DNA profiling provide a glimpse of what the Highlander might have looked like.

Certain genetic markers are associated with distinct physical traits.

-We can't meet Individual One, but we can look at what his DN-- what the algorithm suggests he may have been like, and it's the closest we're ever going to get to knowing him.

So, in terms of physical appearance, Individual One may have had a cleft chin.

Personality-wise, he might have liked to prefer doing things with people.

and this is ideal for being a soldier.

It's a really unique way to look at a person through their DNA.

While the traits can't definitively tell us anything about Individual One, they give us something to imagine.

-The Battle of Camden lasts just 45 minutes but results in roughly 900 Patriot casualties and 300 British.

General Gates flees the battlefield.

-Gates really runs off the battlefield, rides away and makes no attempt to save what's left.

He simply flees, leaving his entire artillery, his train, everything behind.

It's a complete disaster.

-Gates claimed he was riding ahead to find a safe base.

But this disastrous battle and his 180-mile retreat destroy his reputation as one of America's most distinguished generals.

-He made a lot of mistakes, but the more you look into the mistakes he made, they were the consequences of his acting quickly.

He marched into South Carolina too soon.

-Many of the men Gates left behind on the battlefield have lain in shallow graves since 1780, providing slim hope scientists will be able to extract enough DNA to lead to a positive identification.

-Always in the back of our minds, we were thinking if we could just get some DNA, maybe we'd be able to identify some of these soldiers.

Wouldn't that be amazing if that happened?

[ Drum beating, flute playing ] -Incredibly, a viable DNA sample was extracted from one of the Marylanders.

Could this be enough to restore a name to one of the fallen soldiers?

The DNA profile was sent to FHD Forensics in hopes of answering this question.

-They said, "Can you do what you do with John and Jane Does with a John Doe that died 246 years ago?"

And I said, "Maybe," you know?

That's something I would sure want to try.

-His DNA profile was uploaded to existing databases to see if there were any matches.

The results were extraordinary.

-I was just hoping that they would be able to get enough DNA and that if they had a good profile that it would match like one person.

But it was very unexpected.

We had something like 20,000 DNA matches, which is a lot.

[ Indistinct conversation ] -The team traced the family trees of people who matched the soldier's DNA back to a name in the Maryland line records.

-So, I think most of y'all here know why we're here.

It's incredibly expensive work, it's incredibly tedious work, and it's incredibly complicated research to go all the way back to the colonial era.

-It was close to two years, I think, of actively just working the DNA, like, painting all the chromosomes, building the trees, like, figuring it out.

I had to build back family trees for many, many people going, you know, like 10 generations.

-Surviving military records could offer possible names for this John Doe.

-We looked for people that mustered out on the day of the Battle of Camden or went missing at the Battle of Camden and so we were able to go through that and find all the people that had been listed as missing on that day.

And so there was a boy named John Pumphrey on the list.

And so we knew we'd been seeing a lot of Pumphreys in the matches and we're like ding-ding-ding, that's a good one.

So, I guess y'all are kind of wondering what his name is.

[ Chuckles ] His name is John Pumphrey, and he was a private in the 7th Maryland regiment.

[ Applause ] Yeah, I think that deserves an applause.

[ Applause continues ] -It has happened and it's hard to process how significant that this find is and the potential for future finds.

-Looking further into historical tax and land records, Allison uncovered the surprising story of this boy's life -- born into a Maryland family that had settled in America a century earlier.

-We were able to learn quite a bit about John Pumphrey's background.

They were the gentry of Anne Arundel County.

So, we wondered why a child from this family, a prominent family that owned sawmills and lumber properties and carpentry services, and they were pretty prosperous.

And he honestly was orphaned by the age of 10.

-Allison learned that after his father's death, his cousin Rezin confiscated the family land and property, leaving John and his siblings with nothing.

Joining the army may have seemed like an appealing opportunity.

-This left a middle child without any resources.

And I don't know that he had a lot -- a lot of prospects, you know?

I think starting a new life where he could get new clothes and new shoes and meals and army pay was probably a whole new life for him.

-John was already a fourth-generation Marylander, so it is perhaps no surprise that he was keen to serve with other Patriots in the storied Maryland line.

-I think he had motivation and drive and independence, and I think he decided this was how he was going to make his mark on the world.

And we can only imagine that these are the things that drove him, but, you know, orphaned at 10, enlisted at 13, 14, maybe 15, um, that's -- that's an unusual situation.

-John Pumphrey first enlisted in 1777 in Baltimore.

As part of the 7th Maryland line, he was very likely involved in the Philadelphia Campaign, fighting in the battles of Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth, and would have wintered at Valley Forge.

Despite his age, by the time he re-enlisted in 1779 and marched south to Camden, Pumphrey was a veteran soldier.

-That document's a very fateful document because if he had not re-enlisted, he would not have died at the Battle of Camden.

-In addition to finding John Pumphrey, the team made another breakthrough.

They were able to trace living descendants.

-John Pumphrey's family, I imagine they lived the rest of their lives wondering what happened to him.

And they're not here to find that out in person, but their descendants are.

Um, and so, to be able to give him back to his family to let people who, you know, are maybe distantly related, but still feel that connection as this is someone in their family, um, that feels really special.

-Two, three.

♪♪ -I'm Julie Strickland.

When I was a month and a half old, I was adopted.

Many years later, I decided I was going to try to find my family and got my DNA registered.

I heard from Allison a little over a year ago and found out that I am the fifth great niece of John Pumphrey.

I was very surprised and happy and anxious and...just all the emotions rolled up in one.

We had been living very near to where he fell and just didn't know.

As soon as I heard about my patriot being buried at Quaker Cemetery, I knew exactly where that was.

So I was so excited that I ran right up and took all kinds of pictures.

I'll cry at a Hallmark commercial, so I definitely shed a lot of tears that day.

-Much of the Camden battlefield site has yet to be surveyed.

And the work to uncover more about what happened there is ongoing.

♪♪ -Well, AVAR is the most recent archaeological group to be on the battlefield and they're doing great work in filling out some of those areas that we don't know much about, and I think they'll probably be continuing to do great work there.

-Got ourselves a musket ball.

-The American Veterans Archaeology Recovery team brings unique skills and experience to the project.

-AVAR is a transitional training program that's aimed at helping American veterans transition to jobs or careers in American archaeology.

The entire purpose of the program is just to help them move forward with their lives in a way that has tangible benefit to them.

-Well, I'm Chris Scroggins.

I'm from Kansas City, Missouri.

I wanted to be an archaeologist ever since I was a little kid, and I never really thought I'd ever have that opportunity until AVAR came along and presented that to me.

-We were thrilled when AVAR approached us about collaborating.

As a veteran, I identify with veterans, and I like that their mission is to actually try and grow these veterans into full-fledged archaeologists.

-I'll tell you what I love the most about it -- it's working with everyone here that's all veterans.

Um, it's all the best parts about being in the military without all the bad parts.

So, you know, we got teamwork, you know, we all support each other, you know, there's that camaraderie and, uh, everyone works really, really hard.

I really like it.

-In 2023, the fallen soldiers of the Battle of Camden, both British and American, were finally honored for their service.

-I was having a conversation with the soldiers in my head and just wondering would they approve, you know, would they be upset that they'd been, you know, dug up and I felt kind of compelled to write a letter.

-Stacey's letter, from one veteran to another, was placed in the fallen Patriots' coffins when they were reinterred.

-"Dear soldier, whose name is known only to God.

As I lay you with care and love into this coffin, I do not feel worthy of the task.

You likely could not fathom what the United States of America would become from 13 states to 50 and 332 million citizens.

This is what you paid for with your life.

You were unceremoniously dumped into a shallow grave with so many more just like you.

Now, we will give you the heroes farewell that you deserve.

All I can say is thank you on behalf of a grateful nation.

I pray that God's blessings are upon you, and that I will meet you in heaven where we shall all enjoy the peace that we did not know on earth.

Your humble servant, Stacey Ferguson."

On the day of the ceremony, they were taken out of the house here.

They went up to the battlefield for battlefield honors.

-The Highlander was honored by a guard of his modern comrades from the 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland.

-We had these amazing honor guards.

Just really impressive individuals, covered with Iraq and Afghanistan medals.

They were really impressive.

-The Camden Battlefield was in a pine forest.

It was quiet, you know.

You could kind of, you know, hear the breeze blowing through the trees.

Um, there were a lot of spectators there.

Um, and...it -- it just felt like the perfect closure for that project.

-In these coffins are soldiers of the American Revolution.

Throughout history, soldiers have endured and shared the hardships of service, heat and cold, rain and biting insects, boredom and terror, hunger and thirst.

And in the extreme, blood, pain, and death on the field of battle.

-If I were to see him today, I would tell him, "Thank you for your service.

Because of you we're a free nation today."

-And today we gather to acknowledge and honor their service and sacrifice with the dignity that fate denied them over 242 years ago.

-It was a very moving, very moving tribute, and I'd like to think for the soldiers, considering how they were buried, I think they would've been blown away by what went into giving them the sendoff they deserved.

And I wish we could do that kind of sendoff, uh, for all the soldiers out there.

And I think it's important that we remember the soldiers, the sacrifices that they made because they didn't get to -- they didn't get to see what a free United States was.

They didn't get to see the country we've become today.

-Fate has dictated that you will not be forgotten in an unmarked shallow grave.

God bless your souls and may you rest in peace.

Huzzah!

-Huzzah!

[ Applause ] ♪♪ ♪♪