James Buchanan Gerringer was born on July 18, 1856 in Alamance County, North Carolina. Gerringer was a prominent farmer, one-time magistrate, deputy sheriff, and an officer with U.S. Revenue. He was interrogated by solicitor Samuel M. Gattis following the lynching of a Black man named John Jeffress in Graham, North Carolina, in August 1920. Gerringer died in Burlington on October 24, 1940.