Finding Barbara Greenwood, Sylvia's Great-Grandmother

Aurelia Plath's maternal grandparents Mathias and Barbara Greenwood, parents of Sylvia's "Grammy," were both over 50 when they came from Vienna and settled in Denver, Colorado. Aurelia definitely met them; she and her mother took a road trip out West in 1922. 

Barbara Greenwood's children on official papers had given Barbara's maiden name as Meier, Beier, Heimer, and Hemmer. [1] According to Vienna church records, Barbara's maiden name was Bayer (pronounced "byer"). Her father Franz was Hungarian and in Vienna changed his name from Paier (also spelled Pajer) to Bayer. Through Franz, Sylvia was part Hungarian.

Barbara married Matthias Grunwald, a waiter, and at age 54 left Vienna to join him and their children in the U.S. and arrived with her daughter Barbara, age 27, and son Richard, 12. [2] In the 1910 census Mathias and Barbara, last name "Greenwood," were renting a house in Denver. Barbara spoke English; Mathias did not. Their daughter Aurelia Romana Greenwood had come to the U.S. and married waiter Francis Schober, and in 1906 they had a baby girl named Aurelia, who became Sylvia Plath's mother.

In the 1920 census, Barbara Greenwood, 65, is called "Betty," a nickname for Barbara. Barbara Greenwood was buried as "Betty Josephine Greenwood" in Nebraska, which is why it took me ages to confirm any basics about her. Aurelia said her mother's mother had been an orphan; that is proven true. Roman Catholic parish records from the 1700s to the 1900s show absolutely no Jewish family background.

Barbara and Mathias rest in adjacent plots in North Platte Cemetery, which fronts on the Lincoln Highway in Lincoln County, Nebraska. This information is from that cemetery's records:

Mathias Greenwood: Born 19 February 1849 in Vienna. Died 19 June 1926, age 77. Barbara Greenwood: Born 24 September 1854, place not stated. (Her baptismal record says Vienna.) Died 24 May 1945, age 90.

Why should a great-parent matter? Because Sylvia Plath didn't appear out of nowhere. None of us do. 

[1] "Bayer" is confirmed on the marriage record in the Vienna Austria Catholic Church Records 1600-1960, ancestry.com. "Hammer" was Mathias's mother's maiden name.

[2] Richard was in fact the son of 27-year-old Barbara, Junior (1879-1966). The 1930 U.S. census records that Barbara Junior's age at first marriage was 15. In the U.S. she married Henry A. Davis who had a son, Frank. Richard as an adult moved to Michigan and Aurelia, later in life, visited her cousin and his family there.

Sylvia Plath's Mad Grandmother's Ashes

One of 3500 cans of ashes. Photo by "Kim" at Findagrave.com.

Sylvia Plath's paternal grandmother Ernestine Kottke Plath died at the Oregon State Hospital (formerly "Insane Asylum") in 1919, and her ashes in a canister sat in the hospital's basement for a hundred years with 3500 other such canisters holding the ashes of state-hospital patients. This forgotten "Library of Dust" was the subject of a 2011 documentary film of that name, and the subject of a Pulitzer-Prize-winning newspaper editorial published in Oregon in 2005.

When patients' death certificates became available, an Oregon-based contributor to the site Findagrave.com volunteered to locate living relatives willing to receive the ashes. One of the certificates was for Ernestine Kottke Plath. The researcher, Phyllis Porter Zegers, learned that Ernestine's granddaughter Sylvia Plath became a poet and killed herself, but Zegers focused on finding Ernestine's living descendants.

A family member claimed Ernestine's ashes, finally, in September 2020. It's like Lady Lazarus risen.

Sylvia's father Otto Plath was Ernestine's eldest child. While his mother lived, Otto made himself scarce, leaving home for the U.S. at age 15 and then, when his parents and siblings came to the U.S., attending schools far away from them. Aurelia Plath later wrote that Otto stayed bitter about Ernestine's bad mothering. Ernestine's husband Theodor Plath committed Ernestine to the asylum in Salem, Oregon, in 1916. Zeger wrote that according to hospital records Ernestine was admitted suffering from overwork and a leg ulcer, had two "attacks" of something, and dementia. After three years in the crowded mental hospital, Ernestine died there of tuberculosis.

Sylvia Plath knew little or nothing about Ernestine. Aurelia kept secret from Sylvia her Aunt Frieda's information about Ernestine's mental illness. But we carry our ancestors' imprint always, in ways we might not know.