James Edwin Carrigan was born on February 3, 1865, in Rockingham County, North Carolina. Carrigan was a traveling salesman who resided in Greensboro, Durham, and Burlington. In July 1920, he was accused of having been the leader of a lynch mob that was violently turned away from the Alamance County jail by members of the state's national guard. While his close friends took to the papers to exonerate him of the allegation, several members of the national guard testified that Carrigan was on-site throughout much of the ordeal and had been identified by the county jailer and chief of police as the mob's leader. He died in Burlington on December 10, 1930.