From Germany to the Pacific Northwest

Sylvia Plath's story is so New England that links to the Pacific Northwest seem sort of odd. A true Bostonian, she saw England and France before venturing west of the Hudson. In 1910 her future dad Otto Plath left Wisconsin for grad school in Seattle despite universities aplenty nearer by and out east. Otto's classmate inspired his move to Seattle, where in 1912 he got a master's degree and his first teaching job and first wife. But I think it mattered too that Otto's parents and three brothers were already in the Pacific Northwest. 

Although Otto's grandfather disowned him, his family stayed in touch and asked him whether he'd take in his sickly brother Paul. Otto said no.

Otto had been getting kid-glove fine schooling while his family came from Prussia straight to the North Dakota plains where Otto's blacksmith uncle had prospered. After eight lean years, the Plaths in 1910 joined the rootless hundreds of thousands picturing the far-western forests they could mill, mountains to mine, ocean to harvest, friendly neighbors and homesteading land purged of natives. And some good universities. The Northern Pacific Railway made it easier to migrate west than north or south -- and easy to go back if anyone had to.

The railroad further baited its hook with discount ticket prices for passengers going west to the end of the line.

The Plaths like every family in the Northwest labored at lumber mills, paper mills, smithing, shipping, repair shops, contracting, and farming. This map helped me understand why they chose the Pacific Northwest, where some of their descendants still live.

Northern Pacific Railway, 1910. Otto would have got aboard at St. Paul.

Otto Plath Was Disowned Because . . .

A personal insight: Aurelia Plath's Letters Home introduction tells us that Otto Plath's Lutheran grandparents financed his college education on the condition that he become a minister. When Otto told them he could not as a matter of conscience continue at the seminary, his grandparents disowned him and struck his name from the family bible.

That seems exceptionally harsh, but I'm from Wisconsin, in the general area of Milwaukee, 50 miles from Watertown, where Otto lived and attended Northwestern College. Wisconsin was and still is full of Lutherans of German descent, and the Wisconsin Synod is so extremely strict that it will not cooperate with other Lutheran synods on matters of doctrine.

A folk belief among these Lutherans was that if a boy became a minister, God granted his parents automatic tickets to heaven. The first time I met the Lutheran parents of a boy I was dating in the 1970s, they told me this. My date's younger brother was attending Northwestern College, preparing for the ministry; the parents spoke of him with pride. My date was majoring in pre-medical studies and his parents were soooo disappointed that he was not studying to become a minister, and told him so repeatedly. In his junior year of college they were still pestering him to become a minister. They threatened not to strike his name from the family bible but to cut off funds.