When they returned that evening, they encountered three members of a Virginia militia company with Confederate sympathies, George E. Glenn, Daniel W. S. Knight, and William Reese of the Letcher Guards,[3] who were on picket duty at the Fetterman Bridge.
[8] The web site of a Civil War re-enactor group states with respect to the picket duty performed by the regiment in the early days of the war, and obviously with reference to the Battle of Arlington Mills, also on June 1, 1861: "21-year-old Henry S. Cornell of Company G, a member of Engine Co. 13, was killed and another man wounded one night on the picket line.
At least two accounts add an aspect to the story of Brown's death which has raised questions about its combat status or even whether it was war related.
The first account states that at an earlier date Brown had turned Knight over to the sheriff for stealing a cow.
[10] This may suggest a personal motive for the shooting and call into question whether Knight's killing of Brown was in fact combat related or perhaps was instead a matter of revenge.