Ernest Bernhard Jaffe was integral to the formation of the Middle Fork Corporation and built a number of buildings in the Eastatoe/Middle Fork area in the early 1950s. These included additions to the Whitmire-Jaffe House off of US Highway 178 and the beginnings of a resort in Balsam Grove.

E.B. Jaffe was born to Joseph and Anna Jaffe in Berlin on May 20, 1888. As a German national during the World Wars, he moved throughout Europe before ending up in the United Kingdom. After separating from his second wife, Johanna, in 1936, he married Jean Barbour in 1938, and then left Glasgow for the U.S. He’s listed on the ship manifest for the S.S. Cameronia as a tweed merchant. By 1939, E.B. and Jean divorced.

He had two sons James Peter (from marriage with Johanna Heydorn) and Marcel Joseph (from marriage with Jean Barbour), as well as at least one daughter Anne who died in infancy. His son, Marcel, was born in France but also lived in Transylvania County for a time, before eventually settling in New Orleans. Some ancestry sources list he had up to four wives, his last was to Marjorie Sagar of New York in 1941.

E.B. and Marjorie moved to Transylvania County and started business ventures with Marjorie’s brother, Bill Sagar. The two worked in real estate development, and were instrumental in creating the Middle Fork Corporation, and developing the Line Runner Inn. In one 1955 Transylvania Times, E.B. and Bill are shown “chatting with the caterpillar operator” as a lake is being constructed in the Middle Fork community. Considered a “mammoth construction job,” it was situated “high in the ridges bordering the North-South Carolina line” accessible by a road off of Highway 178. By 1956, Our State magazine noted the new “Line Runner” development was taking shape with a the lake nearly half full, the Line Runner Inn near complete, and “a clubhouse with a swimming pool is on the program.” The Line Runner Inn opened in 1957 and was for sale again by 1964.

Despite the Jaffes’ connections to the community, there are no pictures in the library’s history collection of E.B or Marjorie. A 1954 newspaper article reported on the three-month tour E.B. and Marjorie took of Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Images included were of the countries (which the Jaffes were notably absent from), and included quotes from an interview with the couple about prices, politics, and experiences as they traveled the countries.

The property that brought Jaffe to library staff’s attention is the red building near Bird Rock Falls, now on the Living Waters property. The house is near the North Fork of the French Broad next to the Bill McCall mill. According to Jim Bob Tinsley, the property was originally owned by Robert Bracken before being sold to the McCall family. In 1946, Jaffe bought the mill site and built “a teahouse” over the river beside Mill Shoals. A 1990 architectural survey says that “the tea-house also exhibits the same idiosyncratic building style.” The house has been known by a number of names, including the Crazy House, Chalet les Cascades, or the red house by Bird Rock Falls. A 1963 brochure noted “its many and varied dormer windows and levels, in a Bavarian atmosphere, affords wonderful vantage points from which to view the falls and take never-to-be-forgotten pictures.”

Similarly, the Whitmire-Jaffe house of Balsam Grove is listed as originally a log cabin with fieldstone chimney before Jaffe put in a number of add-ons including paneling and wormy chestnut cabinets. The architectural notes say Jaffe paid a man $25 and 5 gallons of moonshine to bring in a waterwheel from South Carolina. The notes also mention that Jaffe likely added a basement to the home, because later owners had to saw up an old furnace to put a new one in, so they believed that Jaffe must have built around it.

E. B. and Marjorie left the area around 1956 to start a tuna business in Hawaii. A news article noted Jaffe as “a man of many talents” and discussed this new tuna enterprise as “rather unusual and certainly interesting.” No information about the tuna business was found in Hawaiian newspapers, though he is listed on a number of Hawaiian apartment building ventures. He died in 1964 after a brief illness, local obituaries noting that funeral arrangements had not “as yet been announced.” Marjorie died in 1968, her will leaving much to her brother and his family.

E.B. Jaffe’s mark on the community lives on in these buildings that stand, as well as in the names of Middle Fork Farm Road and Jaffe Road near the Eastatoe Community Center. Photos and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library. This article was written by Local History Associate Erin Weber Boss. Sources available upon request.