Blythe

Blythe is a name that comes from Middle English, and in turn from Old English bliþe ("joyous, kind, cheerful, pleasant"), and further back, from Proto-Germanic *blithiz ("gentle, kind"). Its cognates include Old Saxon bliði ("bright, happy"), Middle Dutch blide, Dutch blijde, Old Norse bliðr ("mild, gentle"), Old High German blidi ("gay, friendly") and Gothic bleiþs ("kind, friendly, merciful"). No cognates outside the Germanic languages are known.

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Blythe (surname)

Blythe is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

Blythe, California

Blythe /ˈblaɪθ/ is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, in the Palo Verde Valley of the Lower Colorado River Valley region, an agricultural area and part of the Colorado Desert along the Colorado River. Blythe was named after Thomas H. Blythe, a San Francisco financier, who established primary water rights to the Colorado River in the region in 1877. The city was incorporated on July 21, 1916. The population was 20,817 at the 2010 census.

History

In 1875, Thomas Henry Blythe (real last name Williams), a native of England, visited what is now Blythe, intent on finding real estate for development and settlement of an "empire" located next to the Colorado. On July 17, 1877, Blythe filed his first claim for Colorado River water on what was to become the "Blythe Intake". Blythe worked with the engineer William Calloway (known as Oliver P. Calloway in some sources, killed by the Chemehuevi in 1880) and George Irish until his death in April 4, 1883; Blythe's only revisit to the valley was in Fall 1882. Blythe's estate subsequently went into litigation between his illegitimate daughter Florence and other claimants. The California Supreme Court up to 1895, and the U.S. Supreme Court towards the early 1900s, ruled that Florence was the holder of the estate, after several years of preceding rulings in favor of her and appeals against her in these courts.