Melba Charlotte Broderick

Above is a photo of my father’s mother, Melba, and her childhood friend, Violet (Vie), near Joaquin Miller’s house. I heard they were into Isadora Duncan. Did they meet Miller and his daughter at this age?

Joaquin Miller lived in the Oakland Hills above the Stuttmeister farm and orchard located in the city of Fruitvale that would later be incorporated into the city of Oakland. Miller was titled the `Poet of
the Sierras’. His farm was called `The Heights’ and was a Mecca for California artists and poets. This eccentric Bohemian was friends of William Broderick and would accompany Melba Charlotte Broderick, the mother of Victor Presco, to San Francisco where Melba met her husband, Hugo Presco, a professional gambler in the Barbary Coast.

Miller carried the infant father of Rosamond on these adventures that proved too much for Melba who divorced Hugo when Victor, Melba’s only child, was three…