The majestic Victorian home at Fifth and Vine Streets once belonged to John Frank Afflerbach, a former Perkasie school board president and later Perkasie’s Street Commissioner. Afflerbach was born and raised in Bedminster and moved to Perkasie in 1900. By 1902, Frank Allferbach became proprietor of the Perkasie Brick Yards and in 1904 he bought the lot on Vine Street for his new house.
By 1905 Afflerbach had been elected as Perkasie school board president; he also was a founder of the Perkasie Chamber of Commerce. But in February 1908 Afflerbach was caught writing a duplicate set of school bonds for the new school in South Perkasie, and was sentence to 11 years in prison. He had made bad investments in the stock market. The attorneys who proscecuted Afflerbach then argued for his parole and he was released from prison after four years and secured a job at the U.S. Gauge plant in Sellersville.
In 1935, Perkasie Borough appointed Afflerbach as its Street Commissioner at a time with WPA funding led to modern roads, streets, and sidewalks in the Borough. Afflerbach served in that position for the last 10 years of his life, when he passed away at his Vine Street home in November 1945 at the age of 76.
