J. Thompson Brown

John Thompson Brown was a Confederate States Army colonel and artillerist in the American Civil War. He participated in the first exchange of cannon fire, in fact the first shots fired, between a Confederate force and a Union force in Virginia during the Civil War. Browns company of the Virginia Richmond Howitzers artillery regiment, with Brown in command according to some sources, and a Union force, the gunboat USS Yankee, had a minor engagement at the Battle of Gloucester Point, Virginia on May 7, 1861. Neither side suffered casualties. Brown is credited by some sources with firing the first shot of the Civil War in Virginia at that first, minor engagement in the state. During the war, he advanced from the rank of first lieutenant to the rank of colonel in charge of a division of artillery in the Army of Northern Virginia. He was killed by a sharpshooter at the Battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864.

John Thompson Brown was born in Virginia on February 6, 1835. His parents were John Thompson Brown and Mary Brown. He married Mary Southall on April 14, 1858. Brown was achieving prominence as a lawyer in Richmond, Virginia before the Civil War. He had two brothers, Henry Peronneau Brown and John Willcox Brown , who was a first lieutenant in the 12th Virginia Infantry, received a medical discharge in February 1863 but joined an artillery unit at Richmond later that year, eventually becoming a lieutenant colonel in 1865.

Source: Wikipedia