About Their Marriage Certificate

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Otto Plath got a quickie divorce and Otto and Aurelia married January 4, 1932. In Carson City, Nevada. So what's new? A closer look at the marriage certificate. Both claimed they lived in Reno, but courts winked at lies from out-of-staters as long as they brought money for lawyers, legal fees, and so on. During the Great Depression, Nevada only thrived.

And Otto's divorce lawyer witnessed the wedding. E.E. Roberts happened also to be the mayor of Reno. The judge who had just decreed Otto's divorce married the couple. And the certificate is time-stamped: 1:32 p.m.

Because lawyers don't stay around unless they're paid, and because divorce mills waste no time, I'm thinking the Plaths' civil ceremony immediately followed the divorce. Did Aurelia stand by as Otto divorced his first wife by proxy? (A male lawyer served as the proxy and was paid.) Or did Otto trot down the courthouse steps in the January cold to the car -- Esther Greenwood said her just-married parents got into a car -- and say "Hurry up, I'm divorced, the judge is waiting"? Doubtful.

One indicator says they went after the ceremony to Lake Tahoe, then San Francisco; Otto had to sell a piece of land he owned there. If they went by car, Aurelia's mother drove. Having Mother on a honeymoon fries our minds, but the original "wedding journey" was a dutiful round of visits to relatives and friends unable to attend the wedding, and having parents along was not strange. Otto had relatives in Chicago and Reno, Aurelia in St. Louis and Lincoln, Nebraska. These were along the trio's cross-country route. Serendipitous.

More here about their cross-country trip from Boston by car, and Otto's strategic divorce.