After 246 years, Pvt. John Pumphrey is unknown no more.
Through DNA testing and old-fashioned sleuthing, the Maryland teenager who died in one of the last big battles of the American Revolution can now take his place in history, just in time for the 250th birthday of the nation he fought to create.
“There
was a sense of divine timing, I guess,” said Allison Peacock, founder
of FHD Forensics, a company that helped with the search. “I don’t know
what else you want to call it.”
Pumphrey died Aug. 16, 1780, at the Battle of Camden, South Carolina. It was one of the Continental Army’s most devastating defeats, where British Gen. Charles Lord Cornwallis routed patriot forces under Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates.
Many
of the 900 killed were left where they fell, abandoned to the
predations of wild animals, South Carolina’s scorching heat and its
ruinous humidity.
Bones emerge from a Revolutionary War battlefield
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 others were determined to be connected to the
British side and were reburied at the battlefield.
“What we did is pretty much the same as what we do with any other
John Doe case,” she said. “Nobody really knew for sure whether we could
get genetic profiles suitable for a genealogy investigation on
240-plus-year-old remains. But we got lucky.”
Unlike most,
Pumphrey and four comrades received a cursory burial beneath a thin
layer of dirt. He was dubbed “Camden 9B,” because his were the second
set of remains retrieved from burial nine. The remains were examined and
cataloged.
The 12 Continentals were later reinterred with full military honors. Camden 9B’s headstone read: “UNKNOWN. REV WAR. BATTLE OF CAMDEN. AUG 16 1780.”
DNA unlocks a centuries-old mystery
Meanwhile, samples from two of the soldiers were sent to Astrea Forensics in California for DNA extraction and sequencing.
“Typically,
in a case like this, we work with teeth, because teeth are in the jaw
and are protected, the roots are protected,” said Peacock. “In this
case, they were just coming up with nothing on the teeth.”
With remains this old, it’s often difficult to separate the human DNA
from all the other genetic material in the grave, said Astrea co-founder
and scientific adviser Kelly Harkins Kincaid.
The Richland County Coroner’s Office had worked with Texas-based FHD
Forensics on modern-day cases and asked for their help. Peacock took to
calling it the case of “America’s oldest John Doe.”
“It gets colonized by the microbial environment in the soil and the water in the environment,” she said.
Although
she’s worked with DNA samples as old as 10,000 years, this was the
oldest sample her company has ever used to try to reconstruct a family
tree.
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. Peacock’s team
then uploaded the data to FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch to trace three
types of DNA matches: autosomal, X chromosome and Y chromosome.
“We got 20,000 matches to work with,” she said. “So, it was a lot to kind of comb through.”
An orphan soldier’s life comes into focus
One of those matches, from the maternal line, was Russ Hudson.
The
retired federal agent in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, offered to help do
archival research. A profile began to emerge of a young orphan from
Maryland’s Anne Arundel County, dispossessed and looking for his way in
life.
“I learned that probably when he was 13, he went to
Baltimore and he enlisted in the militia,” Hudson said. “And who knows
what his story was? What did he accomplish in order to become a member
of the militia at such a young age?”
Because no birth record has
been found, it’s unclear how old Pumphrey was when he went to war. He
signed his reenlistment papers with an “X.” But he was young enough
that, when he died, the growth plates around his knees had not yet fully
closed, Peacock said.
Researchers now know Pumphrey and his comrades from the 7th Maryland
Regiment were with George Washington in the snows at Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania. Peacock said his unit was involved in some of the major
contests in the Northern Theater, including the battles of Brandywine,
Germantown and Monmouth.
She figures he had marched 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) before he met his end in the pinelands of South Carolina.
“We
don’t really know what John Pumphrey’s cause of death was because they
did not find a particular injury on his body,” she said. “It’s possible
that he had a soft tissue injury, like a bayonet injury, but it’s a
little hard to tell after 246 years.”
An unexpected twist and an emotional reunion
Work continues on the other set of remains, Camden 11A. One thing is certain: Peacock is related to him.
“One
of the first things I do when I take on a case is I run my DNA against
the remains to see if it’s somebody I’m related to, just on the wild
chance that it might be,” she said. “It’s never happened before, but I
am related to Camden 11A. So, I’m very motivated to get him identified.”
Last month, Peacock was confident enough in the research to put a name
to Camden 9B. Relatives wept during an emotional ceremony at the
19th-century Benson-Hammond House in Anne Arundel County.
“The fact that some archaeologists just happened to stumble on bones
that were protruding from the earth, and knowing that it would be
difficult to identify those people by DNA, I just found it really
exciting,” Becky Berman of Daytona Beach, Florida, Pumphrey’s first
cousin, several times removed, told The Associated Press.
For
Hudson, the retired federal agent, the story won’t be over until the
U.S. government confirms the research and replaces his fifth
great-uncle’s “UNKNOWN” gravestone. He said America owes it to John
Pumphrey.
“He sacrificed himself, along with some others,” Hudson said, his eyes tearing up, “for the sake of this new nation.”
There are foods that define a region so completely that eating them
feels less like a meal and more like a loyalty test. In Pennsylvania,
particularly in the southeastern counties where German settlers planted
their roots centuries ago, scrapple is that food. It is eaten without
apology, defended with passion, and explained to outsiders with the kind
of patient resignation usually reserved for discussing local weather
patterns. You either grew up with it or you didn’t. And if you didn’t,
you probably have questions.
Let’s answer them.
What Is Pennsylvania Scrapple?
Scrapple is a savory, sliceable loaf made by simmering pork scraps —
the parts of the pig that don’t make it into chops, roasts, or sausages
— together with cornmeal, flour, and a careful blend of spices
including sage, black pepper, thyme, and sometimes a whisper of
marjoram. The mixture is cooked until it thickens into a dense porridge, then poured into loaf pans and chilled until firm.
The resulting product is sliced into thick planks and fried in a cast
iron pan until the outside develops a crackling, caramelized crust
while the inside stays soft and yielding. It is served alongside eggs,
tucked into sandwiches, draped with maple syrup, or eaten cold straight
from the refrigerator if you are from a certain type of Pennsylvania
household where waste is considered a moral failing.
The name comes from the German word “Schmierwurst” or, more directly,
from the Pennsylvania Dutch “Scrapple” — a straightforward
acknowledgment of the ingredient list. You are eating the scraps. You
always were. The honesty is part of the tradition.
The German Roots of a Pennsylvania Icon
To understand scrapple, you have to go back to the 17th and 18th
centuries, when waves of German-speaking immigrants — primarily from the
Rhineland-Palatinate region, from Alsace, from Switzerland — settled in
the fertile farmland of southeastern Pennsylvania. These were the
people who would come to be called the Pennsylvania Dutch, a corruption
of “Deutsch,” meaning German.
They brought with them an agricultural philosophy built on utility.
On a working farm, nothing was wasted. When a pig was slaughtered in the
autumn, every part of the animal had a designated purpose. The hams
were cured. The belly became bacon. The fat was rendered into lard. The
intestines were cleaned and stuffed with sausage.
What remained — the head meat, the organ trimmings, the odds and ends
— was simmered into a rich broth. That broth was then thickened with
cornmeal (a New World grain the settlers had adopted and made their own)
and seasoned with the herbs and spices they knew from the European
tradition. The mixture was packed into loaves, cooled, and preserved in
the cold cellar or the smokehouse for the weeks ahead.
This was not a delicacy. It was a solution. A practical, intelligent,
deeply resourceful answer to the problem of having more pig than plans.
What makes scrapple fascinating is how that practical solution became
a cultural cornerstone. It moved from necessity to preference, from
farmstead to diner counter, from something eaten because there was
nothing else to something sought out with genuine enthusiasm.
The Pennsylvania Dutch Country Heartland
The geographic center of scrapple culture is a rough triangle drawn
between Lancaster, Reading, and Philadelphia, with the small cities and
rural townships of Berks, Lancaster, Chester, and Delaware counties
forming its beating heart.
Drive through this part of Pennsylvania on a Saturday morning and you
will find scrapple on nearly every diner menu, often listed simply as
“scrapple” with no further description, because none is required. Order
it in an Allentown diner, a Lancaster County farmers market, or a greasy
spoon in Pottstown and you will receive a slightly different version
each time — a different spice blend, a different ratio of cornmeal to
flour, a different thickness of slice, a slightly different shade of
brown on the crust. Each cook will believe, with quiet certainty, that
their version is correct.
The SPAM of the Pennsylvania Dutch, some call it, though that
comparison understates both scrapple’s flavor complexity and its
cultural weight. A more honest comparison might be to haggis in
Scotland, or black pudding in England — a regional meat product made
from secondary cuts, eaten with fierce local pride, and viewed by
outsiders with a mixture of curiosity and mild alarm.
The town of Bridgeville in nearby Delaware even hosts an annual
scrapple festival — Apple Scrapple, as it’s called — celebrating the
crop and the meat
in equal measure. It draws tens of thousands of visitors each year,
most of whom come specifically to eat large quantities of fried scrapple
without social judgment.
The Anatomy of a Perfect Slice
Scrapple-making at a commercial level requires a precise balance of
ingredients and technique, but the broad strokes are consistent across
producers. Pork — usually a combination of head meat, heart, liver, and
sometimes tongue — is simmered until tender, then removed from the
broth. The meat is ground fine. The reserved broth is returned to the
heat, and cornmeal and buckwheat or wheat flour are stirred in gradually
to prevent lumping.
The ground pork goes back in, along with the seasoning: salt, sage,
black pepper, thyme, and the proprietary spice blends that each
manufacturer guards like state secrets. The mixture cooks, stirring
constantly, until it pulls away from the sides of the pot. Then it’s
packed into loaf pans, cooled to room temperature, and refrigerated
overnight until fully set.
The result, when sliced cold, looks a bit like a pale terrine —
grayish-brown, dense, faintly gelatinous at the edges. This is not
scrapple’s most photogenic moment. Raw scrapple does not inspire
confidence. This is something the scrapple evangelists acknowledge
freely. “Trust the process,” they will tell you. “Get it in the pan.”
In the pan is where scrapple transforms. Sliced a quarter to half
inch thick — thinner and it disintegrates, thicker and the interior
stays cold — the slices go into a hot, lightly oiled cast iron skillet
over medium to medium-high heat. They must be left alone for at least
three minutes before touching them. Patience is not optional. Flip too
soon and the crust won’t form. The goal is a mahogany exterior with
defined edges and a soft, almost creamy interior. When it’s right, the
crust crackles audibly when pressed with a fork.
This is the version that converts skeptics.
Who Makes It: The Major Producers
The commercial scrapple industry is small, regional, and fiercely
competitive in the quiet way that food industries tend to be in their
home territories.
Habbersett is perhaps the most widely distributed
brand, founded in 1863 in the Philadelphia suburbs and now sold across
the mid-Atlantic and beyond in the distinctive black packaging that
generations of Pennsylvania shoppers recognize on sight. Habbersett’s
scrapple is considered a benchmark — not the most adventurous version,
but consistent, reliable, and possessed of a clean, sage-forward flavor
that anchors the category.
Jones Dairy Farm produces a scrapple that has
expanded into national distribution, making it a common entry point for
out-of-state buyers who spot it in a Whole Foods or specialty grocery.
It skews slightly milder than Habbersett and has a smoother texture — a
good introduction, though purists sometimes find it insufficiently
assertive.
Rapa Scrapple, made in Bridgewater, Virginia (close
enough to the Pennsylvania tradition that it falls within the cultural
orbit), holds an almost cult following among a certain stripe of
scrapple loyalist. Rapa’s flavor is more pronounced, the texture denser
and more mineral in character. It is the scrapple you eat if you want to
understand what the original farmhouse versions tasted like.
Godshall’s, based in Telford, Pennsylvania, is a
local favorite with strong distribution across Berks and Montgomery
counties. Their scrapple has a slight sweetness in the aftertaste and a
notably crispy crust when fried.
Beyond these, dozens of small regional butcher shops, Amish farm
stands, and farmers market vendors produce scrapple in small batches
throughout Pennsylvania. These artisan versions — sometimes labeled with
only a family name and a phone number — tend to be coarser in texture,
more aggressively seasoned, and entirely unavailable outside a
twenty-mile radius. Tracking them down is a worthwhile project.
How Pennsylvania Eats It
Ask a Pennsylvania native how they eat scrapple and you will receive,
within minutes, a heated opinion about the correct condiment. This is
one of the great unresolved debates of regional food culture.
The ketchup faction is large and unapologetic. The syrup faction —
maple, corn, or sometimes apple butter — is equally committed, arguing
that the fat and salt of scrapple requires a sweet counterpoint. There
is a mustard faction, small but vocal. And there are the purists who
insist that a properly fried slice of scrapple needs nothing at all.
The most common scrapple breakfast
in Pennsylvania Dutch country involves two fried eggs (over easy,
traditionally), scrapple, and a side of toast or a buttered roll. Coffee
is assumed. This is a meal that was designed to fuel a day of physical
labor, and it performs that function without apology. It is not a light
breakfast. It is not a breakfast with aspirations toward wellness. It is
a breakfast that knows exactly what it is.
Scrapple also appears in sandwiches — the classic
scrapple-egg-and-cheese on a kaiser roll is a staple of
Philadelphia-area diners and convenience stores. It turns up on
charcuterie boards at farm-to-table restaurants where it’s been
reimagined with heritage breed pork and custom spice blends. It has been
served on sliders at food truck festivals, incorporated into stuffing
recipes at Thanksgiving, and eaten cold from the block at 11pm by people
who know what they like.
The Nose-to-Tail Argument: Why Scrapple Matters Now
There is something quietly prophetic about scrapple’s ingredient
list. For decades, it was treated as a mark against the food — evidence
of its humble origins, proof that it was the food of people who couldn’t
afford better. The “everything but the oink” framing was meant as a
deterrence.
Then the food world changed. Nose-to-tail cooking
became not just acceptable but fashionable. Chefs like Fergus Henderson
in London built celebrated restaurants around the principle that every
part of an animal deserves skilled preparation and respectful
consumption. The ethical argument — that wasting large portions of a
slaughtered animal is indefensible — gained mainstream traction.
Suddenly, the ingredient list that had been scrapple’s embarrassment
became its credential.
Scrapple has been doing nose-to-tail cooking for three hundred years.
It didn’t need a culinary movement to validate it. The Pennsylvania
Dutch farmers figured out the ethical math in the 17th century and kept
making the same recipe.
This reframing hasn’t dramatically changed who eats scrapple — it
remains primarily a regional, working-class comfort food in its home
territory — but it has opened new audiences. Food writers who might have
dismissed scrapple a generation ago now approach it with the same
vocabulary they’d use for offal preparations at Michelin-starred
restaurants. The product hasn’t changed. The cultural context around it
has.
Scrapple Tourism: Where to Eat It Right
If you are visiting Pennsylvania and want to eat scrapple the way
it’s meant to be eaten, skip the hotel restaurant and head directly to
one of the following:
The Shady Maple Smorgasbord in East Earl, Lancaster
County, is one of the largest buffet restaurants in the United States
and a temple of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking. Their scrapple is made
in-house, fried to order, and served alongside a spread that will
recalibrate your understanding of what a “big breakfast” means.
Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia houses
several vendors selling scrapple, including the Pennsylvania Dutch
stalls that have operated there for over a century. Buying scrapple here
feels like participating in an unbroken culinary tradition.
Stoltzfus Farm Restaurant near Intercourse,
Pennsylvania (yes, that is the real name of the town) serves a farmhouse
breakfast that includes scrapple prepared from a recipe that predates
the Civil War.
Any farmers market in Lancaster, Berks, or Chester County on a
Saturday morning will have at least one vendor selling homemade
scrapple, often in multiple varieties — original, spicy, and sometimes a
“light” version that misunderstands the assignment.
Making It at Home: The Basics
Home scrapple production has seen a modest revival among people
interested in whole-animal butchery, charcuterie, and traditional
preservation techniques. It is not a technically difficult project, but
it requires time, a willingness to work with ingredients that require
some intestinal fortitude (literally and figuratively), and a good loaf
pan.
The essential components are pork stock, ground pork trim (neck meat
and shoulder work well if you’re not working with a whole head),
cornmeal, a small amount of flour, salt, sage, black pepper, and thyme.
The ratio that most home cooks land on after a few attempts is roughly
one cup of cornmeal per quart of broth, adjusted for the texture you
prefer — more cornmeal produces a firmer, crispier result, less produces
something softer and more custardy.
The key variables that distinguish exceptional home scrapple from
merely adequate home scrapple are the quality of the pork
(pasture-raised heritage breeds produce noticeably richer flavor), the
depth of the spice blend (don’t be timid with the sage), and the
patience applied during frying. High heat and long contact time on each
side. Don’t move it. Don’t rush it. Let the crust form.
The Cultural Weight of Scrapple
Foods that provoke strong reactions are always doing something more
than providing nutrition. They are marking identity, drawing lines,
preserving memory, and asserting belonging. Scrapple is all of these
things.
For families with Pennsylvania Dutch roots, scrapple on the breakfast
table is a direct line to grandparents and great-grandparents and the
farm kitchen culture they carried from Germany across the Atlantic. It
is a flavor that encodes history in a way that no written account quite
replicates. The first bite of scrapple for someone who grew up eating it
does not taste like a piece of processed pork. It tastes like Saturday
morning and winter light and the particular specific irreplaceable smell
of a grandparent’s kitchen.
For outsiders, scrapple will never carry that freight. But it can be
appreciated on its own considerable merits: as a technically interesting
meat preparation, as a historically significant regional food, as a
genuinely delicious breakfast when properly executed, and as evidence
that American regional cuisine has depths that get overlooked when
everyone is focused on barbecue and pizza.
Pennsylvania scrapple is not trying to be anything other than what it
is. It is not modernizing itself for social media. It is not
reinventing its packaging. It is not pivoting to address market trends.
It has been the same food, more or less, for three centuries, and it
will be the same food three centuries from now, eaten by people who grew
up with it and will defend it without hesitation.
Why Scrapple Deserves Your Attention
The food world is currently in love with authenticity, provenance,
and tradition. We spend significant energy seeking out foods that
connect us to history, to place, to the labor and ingenuity of people
who figured out how to feed themselves with skill and creativity. We pay
premium prices for heritage products that demonstrate exactly this kind
of lineage.
Pennsylvania scrapple has all of those qualities and costs about four dollars a pound.
It is a food that was invented by immigrants solving a practical
problem, refined over generations into something worth eating by choice,
sustained by regional loyalty through decades when the rest of the
country moved on to more convenient breakfast options, and is now
experiencing a quiet reassessment from a food culture that has caught up
to what Pennsylvania Dutch farmers already understood.
The argument for scrapple isn’t complicated. It’s a well-seasoned,
carefully made, historically grounded breakfast meat that tastes
exceptional when fried correctly. It uses parts of the animal that would
otherwise be discarded. It costs almost nothing. It feeds you for the
entire morning.
Get it in a cast iron pan. Leave it alone. Wait for the crust. Try it
with maple syrup if you want to pick a side in the great condiment
debate, though honestly, a little ketchup is also correct, and the
purists who say otherwise have strong opinions about everything and
should be regarded with affection and mild skepticism.
Pennsylvania scrapple has survived three hundred years without your endorsement. But it would be glad to have it.
