 Bierfield and his African-American clerk, Lawrence Bowman, were confronted in Bierfield's store in Franklin, Tennessee and fatally shot on August 15, 1868 by a group of masked men.The killers were believed to belong to a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, which had emerged as an insurgent force in the state in 1866.Bierfield's murder was reported by both "The New York Times" and the "Nashville Union and Dispatch."