Her Parents' Graves

I traveled to Boston to view Plath-related sites and saw Otto's grave in Winthrop Cemetery and Aurelia Plath's in Wellesley's Woodlawn Cemetery. Both cemeteries are well-kept, tree-shaded, quiet and bewildering. Winthrop Cemetery has three terrace-like sections separated by streets and Otto is buried in the bottom-most terrace, the one not yet filled, which abuts a golf course. At Otto's grave I was alone. What came to mind was "He died like any man." There's no mythic aura unless you bring your own.

It's right off the path as Sylvia said. See it for yourself (video, 21 seconds).

At Aurelia Plath's grave in Wellesley I left a thank-you note near Aurelia's "flush marker," that is, a stone flush with the ground, not even a 3-D brick like Otto's. I used Findagrave.com's coordinates and map to find the Schober plot where Aurelia is buried at her parents' feet. Crabgrass partly obscures Aurelia's marker. Only garden tools could clean it up. I brought the thank-you note thinking gratitude is all any mother really wants. (I don't know what fathers want.) I weighted the note with a stray chunk of marble, and had my picture taken there for social media.

Woodlawn Cemetery, Wellesley, 2024

I had prepared to travel on to Linden, New Jersey and photograph the grave of Aurelia's African-American uncle Christopher Nicholson, buried in Rosedale-Rosehill Cemetery there. Burials in Manhattan are unlawful, so its dead end up in the boroughs or New Jersey. Phoned the cemetery, learned Nicholson has no marker and the only info is the date he was buried: October 31, 1956. The Manhattan death record says Nicholson was 70. In fact he was 73, but apparently he had no one close enough to know that, least of all his niece and great-niece Aurelia and Sylvia.

I didn't go to New Jersey.

Neither parent's gravestone has a quotation or says "beloved" or anything, and neither had any tributes such as plastic flowers, coins, or little flags. I should have brought and planted American flags on all three graves.

Because how these three people became family, Sylvia Plath's family, is a very American story.

Sylvia Plath's Black Relatives: More

The Nicholsons rented 116R North New Jersey Ave., Atlantic City, in 1915. The storefront and rear extension are additions; more typical houses c. 1910 sit to its right and left. [1]

Their marriage lasted 20 years -- from the wedding in Boston in 1906 to sometime after 1925, when the husband, a waiter, was last listed in the Atlantic City directory. In 1928 the wife was still using his surname, "Nicholson" -- in various papers rendered as "Nichols," "Nicholason," and "Nicholas." Husband Christopher J. Nicholson also gave his birth year as 1881, 1882, and 1883, making his later years yet harder to trace.

Something led Nicholson to leave his wife, nee Anna Greenwood, on her own in Atlantic City -- where their four children had died in 1918, of influenza, all four names carved on a single gravestone. Perhaps he sought a better job or a marital separation. Anna remained in Atlantic City, working as a domestic.

Anna was Sylvia Plath's blood relative, the Viennese great-aunt who had married a black American. I have learned that more than any other U.S. city, fin de siecle Boston saw unskilled white immigrant females like Anna marry African-American men employed in skilled occupations. For young women from Europe not yet seized by the very American horror at "miscegenation" (word coined in 1863) it was a step up.

Christopher Nicholson's 1942 draft registration card -- the next obtainable document -- shows him in New York City, working downtown and lodging in Harlem. Anna, under her maiden name, had remarried in New York in 1932, to a white British ironworker formerly employed in Atlantic City. They'd moved to England.

U.S. federal census takers missed Nicholson in both 1930 and 1940. Nicholson filed for Social Security benefits on 23 August 1948, giving what is probably his real birthday: 21 August 1883. [2] The 1950 federal census shows him retired, at the same address as in 1942; his marital status is "separated." I found no divorce in New York legal records, only a civil suit Nicholson filed in the Bronx, in 1953, against one Dominick DeLillo, who, it seems, was an accountant.

Nicholson's niece Aurelia Plath never mentioned any Nicholsons in letters or papers we have access to.

The New York City death record #21385 says Nicholson died in Manhattan on 9 October 1956. He was buried on 31 October in Rosehill-Rosedale Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey. The cemetery confirmed the burial date and that his grave has no marker.

It weighed on me that I had told Anna's story and not Christopher's. Now I have told all I know.

[1] This is the only Nicholson family address still standing. The 1915 New Jersey census shows a racially integrated neighborhood.

[2] Nicholson's 1918 draft registration card gives his birthday, falsely, as "4 July 1881." It was common for men to claim to the draft board that they were older. Otto Plath's brother did the same.

Sylvia Plath Had Black Cousins

Uncle Christopher J. Nicholson checked "Negro" on his draft card, 1918. (Click image to enlarge.)

Sylvia Plath had African-American second cousins who were first cousins to her mother Aurelia Schober Plath. Using public records and genealogical tools, I drilled down into Sylvia's Austrian-born maternal relatives the Greenwoods and Schobers, and discovered:

Sylvia's great-aunt -- her grandmother's sister Anna Johanna Greenwood, from Vienna -- in Boston in 1906 married African-American waiter Christopher Nicholson.

Interracial marriages were legal in Massachusetts, but rare. Sylvia Plath's writings, and what we have of her mother's writings, never mention an Aunt Anna or Annie. I had thought that odd because Aurelia Plath and her mother so much valued contact and visits with relatives. Sylvia's future grandmother with her sister Annie as teenagers left Vienna in 1904 and together crossed the Atlantic to Boston, where they moved in with their brother. Both girls soon married professional waiters. Annie married Christopher J. Nicholson, born in Boston of parents from North Carolina.

In 1907 the Nicholsons moved to Philadelphia, where in November Christopher Jr. was born. The state of Pennsylvania registered the baby as "mulatto." Their daughter Deborah's birth certificate says "1/2 black, 1/2 white."

The federal census for 1910 shows the Nicholsons living in a South Philadelphia boarding house, its head and tenants all designated black except for Nicholson, 28, his wife, 26, and their son and daughter, all designated white. In 1911 the family moved to New Jersey. Its 1915 state census says Nicholson and the children are black.

Nicholson worked steadily as a waiter at Atlantic City's Royal Palace Hotel. In September 1918 he registered for the draft as Christopher Jessee Nicholson, checkmarking the category "Negro," and on the back of the card, the categories "Slender" and "Tall."

The couple had another son, Melvin, and another daughter, Martha. Seeking what happened to them led me to this horrifying photo:

The Nicholson children, ages 11, 8, 5, and 3, all died in October 1918, probably of influenza, and are buried in Atlantic City Cemetery, Pleasantville, New Jersey.

Their parents survived. Nicholson lost his waiter job in 1919 and Atlantic City directories show him employed as a laborer through 1923. Then he is a waiter again, but after 1925 I found no further records of him in Atlantic City. Anna Nicholson appears, alone, in the 1929 Atlantic City directory, working as a domestic. In 1932, as Anna Greenwood she married British-born Joseph Campbell in New York City. The couple moved to England in 1939. The story of their later life in England is posted here.

Sylvia's Plath's mother Aurelia Schober was 12 when her four cousins died. Did she know about them? Could anyone keep secret such a family tragedy? I think Aurelia, who lived with her mother for 40 years, probably heard that her aunt married a black man and got shunned by her family. We do not know what Christopher Nicholson's relatives thought. Did Sylvia know that she had African-American relatives? Probably not. But we do.

The Nicholson family should be added to Sylvia Plath's family tree. [They have been added.]

Draft registration card: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-8BRR-L4C?i=3882&cc=1968530&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AKZJ7-ZNJ  Headstone: Findagrave.com. "England as of 1939": In January 2024 I researched Anna's later life and the story is posted here.