Editor’s Note: Western North Carolina is rich with untold stories—many resting quietly in local cemeteries. In this Tombstone Tales series, we explore the lives of people from our region’s past whose legacies, whether widely known or nearly forgotten, helped shape the place we call home.
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — A small granite marker in Riverside Cemetery bears the name Ben H. Wolfe. The inscription is simple, offering only his birth and death dates, October 27, 1892, to October 19, 1918, but the story behind the name runs deep through Asheville’s history and American literature.
Ben Wolfe was the third of eight children born to William and Julia Wolfe. His younger brother, Thomas, would later immortalize the family’s boardinghouse on North Market Street and its people in Look Homeward, Angel. Long before the world knew Thomas’s name, Ben was the dependable son, the one who worked hard to help his mother run the Old Kentucky Home, the sprawling Victorian boardinghouse that welcomed travelers to Asheville…