Then and Now: Another man undone by the economy

George A. Wagg was a young man who expected to go places, especially after his father brought him to Conway to clerk for him. His father, George W. Wagg, was serving as “roadmaster” of the Maine Central Railroad under General Manager Payson Tucker when Tucker founded the Maine and New Hampshire Granite Co., installing Wagg the elder as manager. From 1884, the company quarried red and green granite from Rattlesnake Mountain in Redstone and gray granite in North Jay, Maine.

Young Wagg was only 18 when he started work, but four years later, he married a Conway girl and bought a plot of land in the middle of North Conway, right on Main Street opposite the head of Kearsarge Street. There he built a grand Victorian house with a substantial carriage barn, as though intending to become a local mandarin.