William Hervey Blymyer was born in Mansfield, Ohio, March 4, 1865, the son of George Washington and Carole (Cook) Blymyer. He studied at Harvard Law School 1885-1887 and later studied international law at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Bonn, Germany. While in Paris he entered the office there of the international law firm of Coudert Brothers of New York City. Upon his return to the U.S. in 1892 he entered the office of Edward K. Jones, later named Eustis, Towns & Govin.

Blymyer was counsel to the InterOcean Oil Co. (1912-1928) that Govin organized. As counsel he formed the Carib syndicate, a New York state corporation, which acquired the Barco concession, a grant of the greater part of the petroleum development right in Colombia, South America. He also organized the United States Asphalt Refining Co. and the Ocean Transport Co., which engaged in the refining of Mexican oil. In his law practice, Blymyer was considered an authority on international and constitutional law. He was one of the attorneys in the case of the “Lusitania,” the British liner sunk by a German submarine in 1915.

He was many times the American delegate to peace conferences to Geneva and The Hague. For many years, Blymyer sought to find a substitute for war as a means of settling international disputes. In 1892, he presented at a world peace congress at Bern, Switzerland, a proposal to establish an economic boycott of treaty-breaking, aggressor nations. This plan proposed for a convention and a series of points to be observed in order to obtain a just settlement of disputes following a war and was fully set forth in a book, The Isolation Plan, which Blymyer published in 1917. This volume, he later maintained, contained, in principle, all but the first of the “Fourteen Points” enunciated by President Wilson in his message to Congress, January 8, 1918, outlining his peace program.

Blymyer also wrote important papers on other subjects, among them being, “The Trust Question: A Solution,” prepared for the annual meeting of the Ohio State Bar Association in 1901, in which he advocated the limitation of fortunes, and “Sin, Man’s Ethical Place in the World under Evolution.”

Blymyer was a member of the New York Bar and the French Alliance. In 1908 he received from the French government the decoration officier d’académie in recognition of his services for fifteen years as counsel to the French consul general in New York City and for the time and legal aid he had given to the French colony in New York City.

Blymyer retired in 1931 due to failing health. He died on April 14, 1939 at Pelham Manor, N.Y.

Source: The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. 28, New York: James T. White & Co., 1940, page 70