Then and Now: Some of the several Hotel Randalls

Enough city people were summering in North Conway by the height of the Civil War that James T. Randall thought he might be able to earn some extra money by taking in boarders. Jonathan Melvin Seavey owned a big rooming house on the west side of Main Street, near River Road, and in June of 1864 Randall bought it for $2,200. The next year, he married Susan Osgood of Fryeburg, Maine, with whom he had two children — a daughter named Carrie, and a son, Harry. Susan died soon after Harry’s birth, in 1870.

James Randall made the mistake of expanding his business in 1873, the year of a major economic panic, and in 1877 the sheriff seized much of his property. By 1881, he and his brother went bankrupt in a joint venture, but James snatched things out of the fire by being the only bidder at the sheriff’s auction. When Harry turned 18, his father put him in charge of the family hotel, long called the Randall House, but the place was growing shabby while competitors around town were sprucing up and adding on. By the 1890s, the Randalls were in debt to the Conway Savings Bank, and after the Panic of 1893, they temporarily conveyed their share of the hotel to a relative of Susan’s.