Tetman M. Schoffner was born in Orange County, North Carolina, on September 10, 1835. A senator from Alamance County from 1868-1870, he passed the famous Shoffner Act, which allows the governor had the power to suspend habeas corpus and use the local militia to suppress areas of the state that were in a state of insurrection. However, due to threats from the Ku Klux Klan, he left the county and moved to Indiana, where he died in April 1910.