Shifting Roads and Short Marriages: The Life and Family of William Jefferson Blythe Ii

Basic Information

Early life, work, and the itinerant rhythm of a 20th-century salesman

I picture William Jefferson Blythe Ii as a man on the move—boots muddy from Texas farms one week, a motel newspaper and a briefcase the next. Born in 1918 in Sherman, Texas, he came from a large family and entered adulthood in an era when travel and temporary labor stitched together a working-class life. By profession he sold heavy equipment and sometimes answered a draft call; by temperament his record reads like a road movie, with shifts in hotels, short stops in small towns, and marriages that begin like gestures and end like second thoughts.

Numbers anchor his life in a blunt way: born 2/27/1918; dead 5/17/1946; age at death, 28. Those digits—two decades and a sliver—are merciless in their finality. He served in the U.S. Army, moved often for work, and left behind a paper trail of marriages and children that reads like an index of mid-century America’s transient workforce.

Marriages, children, and a complicated family table

The human story here is a tangle of brief unions, half-siblings, and a posthumous son who would become a president. I’ve turned the arc into a table because the dates and names deserve to be seen together—quietly, like family photographs laid out on a kitchen table.

The list looks, frankly, like a carousel of brief vows. Records vary slightly across accounts—some reports compress marriages into “four” or “five” unions; the through-line is the same: short marriages, at least three children, and a man whose life accelerated and then stopped.

Death, timing, and a cinematic twist of fate

Death dropped a period in the middle of a sentence. On May 17, 1946—age 28—William Jefferson Blythe Ii was killed in a motor vehicle crash that led to drowning in Sikeston, Missouri. The timing is cinematic in its cruelty: three months after his death, his widow would deliver a son, William Jefferson Blythe III, on August 19, 1946. If you like dramatic irony, this is the kind that screenwriters tuck into origin stories—the absent father, the posthumous birth, the new name the child will later carry.

There’s a small, persistent human detail that readers tend to fixate on: the later life of Virginia Dell Cassidy, who remarried and whose son adopted a different surname as a boy. That choice—oral history, a stepfather’s name, the adoption of a new identity—becomes a motif in the family’s narrative. It’s the quiet movement in the frame while the camera pulls back: one family surviving, reconstructing, and moving forward.

The household ledger: dates, siblings, and a family that stretches

Families are arithmetic. Add one wife here, subtract one the next season, toss in a couple of half-siblings, and you have a house full of relationships that would later ripple into public life. The key figures to keep in mind:

• Henry Leon Blythe — an elder half-brother connected to Blythe’s earlier relationship.
• Sharon Lee Blythe (Pettijohn) — half-sister, born May 11, 1941.
• William Jefferson Blythe III — posthumous son (born August 19, 1946), who became Bill Clinton and later fathered Chelsea Clinton—making William Jefferson Blythe Ii a biological grandfather to a member of a subsequent generation in the public eye.

If you like numbers: we’re looking at at least three children across roughly a decade, with five marriages recorded in various documents—an intensity of domestic turnover most people today would find dizzying.

Legacy, public memory, and the echo through American history

Here’s where ordinary life meets history. William Jefferson Blythe Ii himself never occupied a public office, never produced a memoir, and left no financial ledger valorized by historians. But his story became part of the backstory of an American president: the absent father who died young, the mother who remarried, the son who reinvented himself—these are the motifs of a classic American bildungsroman.

The legacy is less about wealth and more about genetics, timing, and narrative: a working man whose life intersected, accidentally and permanently, with a twentieth-century American saga. If Hollywood were adapting this, it would be a sepia short—quick cuts, motel neon, a train station at dawn—then a fade to black and the long aftermath of the family left behind.

FAQ

Who was William Jefferson Blythe Ii?

William Jefferson Blythe Ii was a traveling heavy-equipment salesman and U.S. Army veteran born February 27, 1918, who died in an automobile accident on May 17, 1946.

How many times was he married?

Records show multiple short marriages—accounts commonly list around four to five unions between the mid-1930s and the mid-1940s.

Who were his children?

Notable children include Henry Leon Blythe, Sharon Lee Blythe (later Pettijohn), and William Jefferson Blythe III (born August 19, 1946), who became Bill Clinton.

How did he die?

He died in a motor vehicle crash and subsequent drowning on May 17, 1946, in Sikeston, Missouri.

Was he wealthy?

There are no public records indicating significant personal wealth; he is described in contemporary records as a working-class salesman who died young.

Is he related to Chelsea Clinton?

Yes—William Jefferson Blythe Ii is the biological grandfather of Chelsea Clinton through his son William Jefferson Blythe III (Bill Clinton).

Did his death affect his son’s life?

Yes; his death before his son’s birth meant the child was raised without his biological father and later took his stepfather’s surname, shaping family identity and biography.

Are the dates and marriages certain?

Some details vary across documents and reports, but the major dates—birth (2/27/1918), death (5/17/1946), and the posthumous birth of his son (8/19/1946)—are consistently recorded.