Otto Plath's Wives and His Sister Frieda Plath

Frieda Anna Plath and brother Hugo, Sylvia's aunt and uncle, c. 1918 [1]

Otto Plath blamed and hated his first wife, Lydia Bartz Plath, but gosh, it seems she tried to be a good wife, and at UC-Berkeley where Otto was teaching German and working toward his doctoral degree, Lydia too took courses, passing a two-credit course in German and the noncredit "Phys Ed 4a" and "Household Econ 6" and a first-level course in Graphic Art. [2]

Part of Otto's complaint was that Lydia was not educated, and that is true: The first high school in her hometown, Fall Creek, Wisconsin, opened in 1913, the year after she'd married Otto and moved west with him. But Lydia was not stupid or lazy, and when Otto in 1915 went East to graduate school and did not send for her as he had promised, she went home, earned college credit from a University of Wisconsin correspondence course, and enrolled in a Chicago hospital's nursing school where Otto's younger sister Frieda -- who had grown up in her aunt's house in Wisconsin -- was a year ahead of her.

Frieda Plath befriended and encouraged both of Otto's wives. They needed the solidarity. Lydia's only work experience was as a clerk in her hometown's general store. She liked Frieda well enough to join her at nursing school. After Otto married Aurelia, Frieda wrote the new well-educated wife and they exchanged letters as long as Frieda lived. Frieda sent gifts to her niece Sylvia and nephew Warren, and was the only Plath relative Sylvia ever met, out in California, where Frieda had married Walter Heinrichs, M.D. Aunt Frieda left a good enough impression that Sylvia, pregnant when they met in 1959, named her daughter Frieda. Up for auction not long ago was an ugly little German hymnal owned by Aunt Frieda (1897-1970) and passed down to her namesake. Frieda Plath Heinrichs and her husband had no children.

Otto had left Lydia owing her money. He told people she had been sexually "cold." (Always, when defaming a woman, reference her sex life!) Lydia Plath by 1924 was an operating-room supervisor at Luther Hospital in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a title she held until retirement. In the 1930 federal census, although still married she called herself "single," probably to keep her job; all the hospital's nurses are listed as single, and that was still true in 1940. In 1950 Lydia declared herself divorced.

Laws made life hard for women. Sylvia Plath's life was bounded and frustrated by laws governing birth control, marriage, and divorce. Inheritance and copyright laws still dog her estate. Aurelia Plath dated married man Otto because Lydia wouldn't divorce him, and Aurelia couldn't marry him until new Nevada laws opened a way. After marrying, Aurelia would not leave Otto -- Sylvia's big complaint about her mother -- because Depression-era law gave any open jobs to men or single women -- and separated-with-kids was not "single," as Sylvia found out. 

While Otto Plath pursued his academic dreams, Lydia kept writing him, proof that she had not legally deserted him. He hated her letters. I'd love to read them. There is one sample of Lydia's writing in researcher Harriet Rosenstein's archive at Emory University, dated 12 July 1975:

Dear Miss Rosenstein,

In reply to your letter, I have just two things to say:

1) My life with Otto Plath became a closed book when we were divorced; and so, under no circumstance, would I give out any information about him.

2) You had your nerve sending me an open copy of a letter, which you had addressed to me, to the village clerk.

Yours truly,

Lydia Plath [3]

Rosenstein, undaunted, did a workaround, and in February 1977 the Fall Creek village clerk Marjorie Shong spilled the tea about Otto's investing and losing his wife's and in-laws' money, and that Otto wanted his sick brother to move in with them and Lydia said no, and that Otto got to thinking he was too good for her. But by 1977 Rosenstein had given up on writing a Plath biography.

Years after separating, Lydia still had to mop up after Otto when she -- born in Wisconsin -- had to petition for U.S. citizenship. Under the law, Lydia had become a German citizen when she married German citizen Otto. Otto was naturalized in 1926, but by then the laws had changed so that wives married under the old law had to petition for naturalization on their own.

On 15 September 1931 Lydia Bartz Plath renounced The German Reich, and a Wisconsin circuit court restored her U.S. citizenship. [4] After fifteen years estranged, Otto, she wrote, was still "my husband." But not for long.

[1] Studio photo taken in Chicago, dated by its former owner 1917, but Hugo Plath first enlisted in the army on 29 July 1918 and was discharged on 23 December 1918: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-1910.  [2] Wisconsin State Board of Health Application for Registration, Wis., dated 5 December 1924; U.S. Employment Records, 1903-1988. [3] Rosenstein mss. 1489, Plath, Otto, circa 1927-, "Otto Plath Colleagues Bussey"[4] Wisconsin, County Naturalization Records, 1807-1992, Eau Claire, Petitions, v. 4-13 1927-1943, p. 73.

Theodor Plath's Last Will and Testament

Theodor Plath, Sylvia Plath's paternal grandfather, died on Nov. 5, 1918. He had filed his will (No. 2876) in Clark County, Washington State, on May 26, 1918. It's worth reading, and there's a surprise inside:

IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN! I, Theodor Plath, being of sound and disposing mind and memory, and not acting under the fraud, duress or influence of any person or persons, make this will.

I request that all my just debts against my estate including my funeral expenses and the expenses of my last sickness be promptly paid.

I give to my beloved wife Earnestine $100.00.

I give to my son Otto $1.00.

I give to my son Paul $1.00.

I give to my son Max $1.00.

I give to my son Hugo $1.00.

I give to my daughter Martha $1.00.

All the rest and residue of my property which I may own, die possessed of, or have a right to dispose of at my death I give and devise to my daughter Frieda.

I hereby appoint my son Max executor of this last will and request that no bonds be required of him, as such, by any Court or Judge.

Theodor Plath (SEAL)

Signed and sealed by Theodor Plath, testator, and by him declared to be his last will in our presence, who have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses in his presence and in the presence of each other at his request, at Oregon City, Oregon, this 26th day of May 1918.

Witnesses: Maud Davis (of Oregon City), Annie Stribley (of Portland, OR). [1]

Five days before filing this will, on May 21, 1918, Theodor Plath had filed at the Vancouver [WA] Land Office a Homestead Act claim (aka "patent") to 120 acres in Clark County, Washington, near Salmon Creek, a bit north of Portland, Oregon. [2] As Homestead Act land it was free, although the owner was given a certain number of years to improve it. U.S. homesteading, mostly on formerly Indian lands, was available from 1862 to 1976. Below, in the orange square within the square, is Theodor Plath's 1918 property:

and, from the Bureau of Land Management, Theodor's title or "patent" on that land, dated 5/21/1918. Of course the land has been bought and sold since then:

Bequeathing children $1.00 was not always a "disinheritance" or insult. Were that the case, Theodor probably wouldn't have named his son Max as his will's executor. Theodor might have distributed his assets already, and the will was a formality. Or the $1.00 acknowledged that the offspring were self-supporting adults, or proved that the testator was sound enough of mind to list all family members and give them a token. Frieda Plath, the youngest, in 1918 was 21 or 22 years old and in a Chicago nursing school. Sylvia met her Aunt Frieda in 1959 and liked her. Ernestine Plath, Sylvia's paternal grandmother, in 1918 was in an Oregon mental hospital and survived Theodor by less than one year.

According to a March 1980 letter from Aurelia Plath to Mary Ann Montgomery, Otto Plath owned property in San Francisco that he sold or otherwise tended to while the Plaths were on their honeymoon. Any record has yet to be found.

[1] Washington State Archives (Olympia, Washington); Probate Place: Clark, Washington, pp. 112-113.

[2] https://glorecords.blm.gov/details/patent/default.aspx?accession=630759&docClass=SER&sid=2frdqc0a.3b2