 The previous evening (May 22, 1861), opposing factions skirmished in the Town of Fetterman (now a part of Grafton), resulting in the death of Thornsbury Bailey Brown, the first soldier killed in the Civil War.Southern supporters joined the Confederate Letcher's Guard.With the Grafton Guards in Wheeling, Porterfield occupied Grafton on May 25, but left three days later for Philippi, when he realized his vastly outnumbered forces were facing a pincer movement from troops under the Wheeling militia's Col. Benjamin Franklin Kelley (soon to become a Brigadier General and who would station his Railroad Division at Grafton) as well as various Ohio and Indiana units sent by Union General George McClellan, a U.S. Army officer turned railroad man whom President Lincoln had placed in charge of the Department of the Ohio.