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The Wagners lived in a rented home at 815 Bridge
Avenue,
next door the Mathias and M. Caroline Hess. The two families would live
side by side for over 30 years. Mathias Hess and family lived at 719 Carman Street
in 1890, this worth noting as George C. Wagner would live most of his
life before 1950 on that block.
By
the time the 1906 Camden City directory was compiled, the Wagner family
had rented a house at 745 Carman Street,
while at 747 Carman lived Mr. and Mrs. Mathias Hess, and a boarder named
George C. Wagner, Harry's brother (his name is sometimes given as George
K. Wagner). Both George and Harry had their occupations listed as
ironworker.
When
the 1910 census was taken, the Harry Wagner family then were renting a
home at 745 Carman Street.
Besides George and his parents, both 36 at the time, the family included
step-sister Ethel Kinsey, 17, and brothers Philip B. Wagner, 12; Harry J.
Jr., 10; and Roy A. Wagner, 8. A divorced uncle, Robert B.
Tomlinson,
lived with the family. Interestingly enough, next door at 747 Carman Street,
lived Mathias and M. Caroline Hess. Robert B. Tomlinson Jr. boarded with
the Hess family, as did uncle George C. Wagner.
Young
George C. Wagner attended Camden public
schools. Like the majority of young men of his time, he did not go on to
Camden High School. He worked at different jobs in the early
1920s.
George
C. Wagner lived at 729 Carman Street
in the 1910s through the 1930s. The 1914 City Directory shows the
Wagners at 729 Carman, while the Hess family was at 723 Carman Street.
The 1920 Census shows Harry And Susan Wagner at 729 Carman Street
with four sons- Harry, 19, Roy, 17, George, 15, and Mathias, 9,
obviously named after Mathias Hess. The Hess family, Robert Tomlinson
Jr., and uncle George Wagner, were still at 723 Carman Street.
Mrs. Hess passed away in February of 1927. Mathias Hess would
subsequently go to live with Harry & Susan Wagner.
The 1924 City
Directory indicates that George C. Wagner had gone to work as an ironworker, Camden then having
several foundries. The 1929 directory gives his occupation as 'spindleworker',
which probably meant that he worked at one of the textile firms that
were in Camden at that time. The 1929 City Directory also shows
that brother Harry J. Wagner Jr. had joined the Camden fire department
and was living at 723 Carman Street. Harry J. Wagner Jr.
would rise to
the rank of Acting Chief of Department in 1958. His son, also named
harry J. Wagner, also served with the Fire Department in Camden.
The April 1930 Census shows George
Wagner still living at 729 Carman Street
with his brother Mathias, 19,
and his parents. Mathias Hess, then a widower,
also lived there. George Wagner's occupation is given as
"operator" at a "cloak factory"- there were a number
of coat manufacturing firm in Camden at that time. George C. Wagner was
still single at that time.
During
the 1930s George C. Wagner married a woman named Mildred. By 1942 they
were separated. He remarried after returning home from the war. His
second wife Lillian, had three children, Joan, Carol and Richard, from a
previous marriage. George and Lillian would go on to have eight of their
own. Altogether the Wagners had
ten children. Besides Joan, Carol and Richard the
family included Leroy (Lee), Kenneth, Bonnie, fraternal
twins Larry and Louise, Karen, and George Wagner Jr.
On
August 26, 1942 George C. Wagner, then separated from his wife Mildred,
was inducted into the United States Army.
George C. Wagner had divorced and remarried by 1947. The 1947 City Directory shows he
and his brother Phillip Wagner were both tending bar at Roy's
Cafe at 800
Federal Street.
Roy's Cafe was owned and operated by
another brother, Roy A. Wagner. George
C. and Lillian Wagner were then living at 611
Carman Street. The
family had moved to 337 Warren Avenue by 1956, and remained there
through at least the fall of 1959. Roy's
Cafe had also moved, to
733 Federal Street.
The tavern remained open into the early 1970s. Oldest brother, Harry J.
Wagner Jr., would become a fire fighter in Camden. Youngest brother
Mathias Wagner managed the Woolworth's store at Broadway and
Federal Street.
During
the 1960s and 1970s one "urban renewal" project after another
tore through downtown Camden. Carman Street
literally disappeared, and
the 300 block of Warren
Avenue, which ran from Mickle Street
to Wright
Avenue just east of
Carteret Street, now lies below under the southbound
access ramp to Interstate Route 676, just east of
Haddon
Avenue.
At
some point in the 1960s George C. Wagner and family moved to 832 Market Street,
directly across the street from the Towne Park Motel. By
the 1980s this was the only building still standing in the
triangle-shaped lot at the intersection of Federal and
Market Streets. The
building is best remembered as the home of a check cashing business, and
was razed in the early 2000s to make way for a medical facility. Things
then were not so good, Roy's
Cafe was gone, and George C. Wagner
was living his daughter and other family members in a small apartment
above the check cashing business. The
family left Camden
around 1971.
Last a resident of Woodbury
NJ, George C. Wagner died in February of 1974.
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