The first photograph that caught Marsha Steckling’s attention showed a cat sitting on a front porch.
In 2009, the Colorado photographer was browsing a Denver antique shop when she discovered four weathered folios containing 677 black-and-white photographic negatives, including one labeled “Yellow Cat on Front Porch.” The collection also featured images of family gatherings, pets and a mysterious mining camp in the California desert.
Steckling, long drawn to vintage pictures of people and pets, bought the intriguing collection for $75. She had no idea the negatives would eventually lead her and her husband, Ray Agostinelli, to a historic home on Coronado’s Ocean Boulevard.
The negatives, most dating from 1929 to 1938, held the forgotten history of a Coronado family. Identifying the people behind them would take years of research, a visit to the Coronado Historical Association and a search for descendants thousands of miles away.
“It was just like solving the biggest puzzle that you could,” Steckling said.
For years, the folios sat on a shelf in the couple’s Boulder home. Steckling occasionally examined them, intrigued by handwritten descriptions that offered clues but rarely complete names.
When the COVID-19 pandemic gave her more time at home, she began scanning and restoring the negatives, studying the photographer’s abbreviated notes and searching for connections between the images.
One photograph showed a family relaxing in a living room, with a woman reading, two boys sitting nearby and a dog stretched across the floor. Others captured Christmas gatherings, backyard celebrations and picnics beside automobiles.
The collection also included photographs of miners, blacksmiths, and buildings scattered across the desert.
A breakthrough on Ocean Boulevard
Some handwritten descriptions referenced “545 OB,” while others mentioned Coronado or Ocean Boulevard. In photographs of a house, Steckling could make out the number 545.
An online search led the couple to the historic Millar-Geary House at that address.
Built in 1910 in an English-inspired style with prominent gables, the house has since left the Millar-Geary family’s hands. Its owners undertook an extensive renovation before moving in, in 2020, according to the Coronado Historical Association.
The photographer had marked the first folio with the initials “E.A.M. Jr.” He also appeared in several photographs, although his full name was never recorded.
In 2022, Steckling and Agostinelli flew to San Diego and walked into the Coronado Historical Association without an appointment, carrying one of the folios.
Curator of Collections Vickie Stone met with them for about two hours and helped them research the house’s history.
Stone said the photographer’s handwritten notes, which included dates, locations and initials identifying people, provided valuable clues. The greater challenge was piecing together the relationships between the Millar and Geary families and their connection to the desert mining operations.
She identified one of the home’s early owners as Brig. General Edward Alexander Millar Sr., a U.S. Army officer who served in the Spanish-American War and World War I. Millar commanded field artillery troops during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France and died in Coronado in 1934.
“It was literally sitting in the conference room of the Coronado Historical Association with Vickie, where she pulled up the record and she said the name Edward Alexander Millar,” Agostinelli said.
Millar’s son, Edward Alexander Millar Jr., was a photographer and mining engineer who documented both his family and his work in the desert.
Further research connected the Millars to the Geary family through Millar Jr.’s sister, Margaret, who married into the family descended from John White Geary, San Francisco’s first mayor.
The photographs captured the family’s everyday life during the Great Depression, including backyard games, holiday gatherings and quiet moments at home. Stone said the collection also includes photographs of Fourth of July celebrations and the wreck of the SS Monte Carlo off Coronado.
Other images show workers building structures, operating a blacksmith shop and developing the Sunrise Mine in the desert near present-day Joshua Tree National Park.
“We often make the assumption that the Great Depression didn’t affect Coronado in the same ways it affected other communities, but I think it’s important to question that assumption,” Stone said.
Reuniting a family with its past
One question remained: How had the negatives traveled from Coronado to an antique shop in Denver?
The couple’s genealogical research revealed that one of Margaret’s two sons later retired from the military, moved to Denver and died there.
Steckling and Agostinelli believe his belongings may have been dispersed after his death, eventually reaching the antique shop.
“We don’t have an absolute paper trail, but it’s a safe assumption,” Agostinelli said.
Their search eventually led to two living descendants: siblings Amy Hathaway Boda in Switzerland and Trey Hathaway in Virginia.
Steckling contacted Amy through Facebook but heard nothing for about a month. Then, while on vacation, she received an enthusiastic response.
The siblings later joined the couple for a video call, where Trey revealed that he had preserved family photo albums containing prints that matched some of Steckling’s negatives.
For Steckling, who had spent years restoring the photographs, seeing the original prints was especially meaningful.
“To see his real, the real prints that he literally printed himself almost 100 years ago…it was just like wow, it was so amazing,” she said.
The couple initially considered donating the collection to the Coronado Historical Association, but finding descendants who valued the family’s history changed their plans.
The family now intends to keep the original folios in its personal archive, where they can be reunited with photographs preserved across generations.
Steckling and Agostinelli shared their findings at a Coronado Historical Association presentation on Oct. 15, offering residents a glimpse of life in Coronado nearly a century ago.
“If there’s a family member who cares, they should have that,” Agostinelli said.
