Plath Ancestry, As I See It

Plath ancestors. Sylvia's complete family tree is at FamilySearch.org.

Used to be that the Plath family tree went back only to 1826, the birth year of Sylvia's great-grandfather Johann, the man who disowned his grandson Otto. That's 200 years. It wasn't enough.

I recently added two generations to Plath ancestry, back to the 1700s.

Johann Plath and wife Caroline, who was Polish, came to the U.S. from Prussia in 1885, bringing two young-adult children, Emil and Marie. According to locals, the Plaths arrived in Wisconsin "very poor people."

I figured because Caroline was Polish she and Johann fled what was in 1885 very active persecution, in Prussia, of Poles. Johann's brother had died in 1884 and Johann took over his Wisconsin farm. When Johann retired he sold the farm and rented a house. In 1899 he was able to pay his grandson Otto's passage to America and the boy's tuition at a college preparatory school and then college. The string attached was that Otto had to promise to become a Lutheran minister. When Otto, college graduate, told Johann he'd rather be a teacher, Johann crossed Otto's name out of the family Bible and disowned him.

Otto might not be the only offspring Johann disowned. Either he or Caroline told the 1910 federal census-taker that they had eight children, five still living. [1] Documentation shows only two of the eight were dead: a son who died in childhood and Marie, dead in 1895. Johann, maybe along with his wife, considered one of his six surviving children dead to him. And then his grandson Otto, who in 1910 was 25.

If the census didn't make a miscalculation it offered more of a sense of how Johann's love and money were contingent on family members doing his will.

They said out of their eight kids only five were living.

U.S. records say only that old Johann's father's name was Julius, and there the Plath family trail went cold. There were many ethnic-German "Julius Plaths" all over Prussia, and none a match.

A Plath descendant had met with this same genealogical "roadblock," and last year I promised I would scour German/Prussian records to find our man. I found Julius and a bonus -- his parents' names and their wedding date.

Born in Luebbersdorf in northern Prussia, Julius Plath (1791-1847) was baptized Andreas Julius Plath, after his two baptismal sponsors. Other local records call him "Andreas Julius" and "Julius Andreas," but he went by "Julius" and he was buried with that name.

From what I have gathered, Julius was copying his own father, Johann Heinrich Plath (born 1766) who amid the tons of other "Johanns" in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin chose to be called "Heinrich." Below is Julius's 1791 baptismal record. Heinrich's name starts beneath the inkblot, and the entry ends with his wife's name, Regina Maria Schroeder (b. 1763) whom Heinrich married in 1785. [2]

The name "Heinrich Plath" starts on the line below the ink blot.

I have formal genealogy training in courses taught by professional genealogists, have been coached in searches by members of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) who operate Familysearch.org, the genealogical site that requires you to link your findings to documentary evidence. I have spoken and corresponded with Plath family members. I read German. Since 2023 I have successfully traced histories of other families including Sylvia Plath's s maternal line (Sylvia was part Bohemian and part Hungarian). When I make errors I correct them. Applying my experience got the above Plath family ancestry result. Another genealogist in 2025 on FamilySearch sent me an angry message and erased my extension of the Plath family tree, reverting it to her own, which goes back only as far as great-grandfather Julius, who had been my starting point.

The land that in Otto's time was the Polish Corridor has twelve (yes, a dozen) towns and villages named "Grabow." Via the Julius inquiry, I was finally persuaded that Otto Plath's birthplace was the "Grabow" specifically in district Mecklenburg. It is the most populous of the twelve Grabows and in Otto's North German ancestral home district. Then I tried finding a record of Otto's birth there in FamilySearch's billions of genealogical records and other German-language databases. The record books in Mecklenburg's Grabow covering Otto's birth year, 1885, and a few adjacent years, are missing, were never photographed or microfilmed, and that's what genealogists call "hitting a wall." I have eleven more Grabows to look into.

[1]  United States, Census, 1910," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MPVY-J66 : Thu Mar 07 18:28:20 UTC 2024), Entry for John Plath and Caroline Plath, 1910.

[2] I replaced the umlauts in the text with the "ue" and "oe" just for now.

Sylvia Plath family tree at FamilySearch.org. 

Sylvia Von Platho

Baroness Charlotte Sophie von Platen und Hallermund (1669-1725)

Plath family lore says Sylvia Plath's paternal great-grandfather Johann, when he came from Prussia to America, gave his name as Johann von Plath, the "von" indicating descent from a line of nobles, specifically barons, who for 900 years had lived on land grants from Prussian rulers. An American official scolded Johann, "We do not allow titles in America."

Not contented to live the rest of his life as a common Wisconsin farmer, ten years later for his daughter Mary's death certificate Johann Plath gave his surname as "von Platho." His father and brother and his children and grandchildren were all from birth surnamed "Plath," none of them "von Plath," or "von Platho," which sounds like a made-up name anyway. But it's a real name.

Sylvia Plath's paternal line shared its home territory with generations of nobles surnamed von Platho, von Platen, von Plotho, von Plato (many scholars have that name), von Plathe -- all from the German root "plat," meaning "flat." The "plat"-rooted names were geographical, "von" meaning "from." So all those names, which in German sound much alike, mean "from the lowlands of northern Germany." That area's also called Pomerania, which is Polish and means "on the sea."

While everyone wishes to have noble or royal ancestry, and Johann Plath, Otto Plath's illiterate grandfather, was a status seeker, no evidence links Sylvia Plath with Prussian or German gentry. German chancellor Otto von Bismarck in the 1870s and 1880s liked handing out the "von" title to flatter and keep the loyalty of wealthy industrialists and parvenus, but Sylvia's family of farmers and small-town blacksmiths was unlikely to receive even that lowest of noble titles. [1] The surname "Plath," with no "von," is very very common.

[1] Spring, David, ed. European Landed Elites in the Nineteenth Century. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. 

Johann Plath's Bastard

Train station at Budzyn, point of departure for three generations of ambitious Plaths.

The young couple whose parents wouldn't consent to their marriage could and did produce what was then called a bastard, shaming both sets of parents into giving the consent required by law.

The would-be bride and groom were not kids. They were both 26. The trouble was that she was Catholic and he was Lutheran.

Baby Theodor -- Sylvia Plath's future grandfather -- was ten months old when his parents Johann and Karoline Plath were at last married. The pious pair then argued about raising their children in this faith or that.

Station still stands at Budzyn (now in Poland).

Theodor's birth record in the town of Budzyn, Prussia, November 5, 1851, shows his mother's name, Karoline Kaczmarek, but in the space for his father's name is "ignatus" (unknown). When Johann, emigrant to the U.S., heard that Theodor's teenage son was super-smart, Johann generously paid for young Otto Plath to come to the U.S. and for Otto's tuition for Lutheran prep school and college, on the condition that Otto become -- a minister.

But when Otto told his grandfather he would rather teach than be a minister, Johann crossed Otto's name out of the family bible, an act of Christian righteousness sowing alienation and Otto's future bitter atheism.

It was meant to be a memorable scene, and Otto long remembered and told about that one selfish act, by which Johann Plath is remembered.

"argued about raising their children": Clark, Red Comet, 6. " "bitter atheism," The Bell Jar. Spelled "Budsin" in Prussia, the Plaths' hometown is now Budzyn, Poland.