These people arent related to the Fugates: Also fake. From a history of Perry County and some Fugate family Bibles listing ancestors, Cawein has constructed a fairly complete story. In 1980, anthropologist Robert Tincher published a study titled Night Comes to the Chromosomes: Inbreeding and Population Genetics in Southern Appalachia, based on 140 years worth of marriage records. The entry was on the blue men, not of West Virginia, but of the Mountain State's neighbor, Kentucky, . One of em I remember seeing him when I was just a boy Blue Anze, they called him. It is home to so much creativity, and has been a place of devastating poverty. 702 ft (214 m) Time zone: UTC-5 (Eastern (EST)) Summer : UTC-4 (EDT) GNIS ID: 1549599: Blue is an unincorporated community in Tyler County, West Virginia, United States. then I sat down and we began to chart the family." Some sites say 100%. Matt Harvey And they married the people who lived closest to them, the Combses, Smiths, Ritchies, and Stacys. Got a question about todays news? Scott was a Public Health Service doctor at the Arctic Health Research Center in Anchorage who had discovered hereditary methemoglobinemia among Alaskan Eskimos and Indians. I just knew that patient was going to die right there in the health department, but she wasnt atall alarmed. 2019 Foreign-Born Population 30.2k people As of 2020, 1.64% of West Virginia residents (29.6k people) were born outside of the United States, which is lower than the national average of 13.5%. As travel became easier, more people moved into and out of the Fugates area of Kentucky, including some actual Fugates. The ZTF scans the entire Northern sky . For some, though, there was a pain not seen in lab tests. Population: 6,427High school graduation rate: 70%Bars per capita: 1st in WVMobile home parks per capita: 1st. By the time theyd get to the top, the person would be gone. Edit Old Gold & Blue Page The boy inherited his fathers lankiness and his mothers slightly nasal way of speaking. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 5 years ago when I was on a swingerparty she got pregnant with me. It is bordered by Pennsylvania to the north, Maryland and Virginia to the east, Kentucky to the southwest, and Ohio to the northwest. He was a French orphan who knew nothing of his lineage. She has lived in the primitive dwelling without running water or electricity on the slopes of Dead Fall Mountain her entire life. Researchers believe this to truly be the case, a result of the family suffering from a genetic condition called methemoglobinemia, which is an excess of methemoglobin in the red blood cells of the body. Thankfully, Benjy lost his blue shade after a few weeks and the only lingering effects were blue fingernails and lips when he was cold or angry. Embarrassed by their bluish hue, the families retreated even further from society, which only exacerbated the problem. Upon discovering the blue members of the Fugate family were perfectly healthy in every other way, Cawein decided to try some experiments to see if the blue color could be treated. Over time, fewer and fewer babies were born blue, and those who were took a methylene blue pill once a day to put the pink back in their cheeks. He injected the Ritchie siblings with 100 milligrams of the blue dye and didn't have to wait long to see results. She and her husband Alva have a strong sense of family. "The beginning of this story is so wild because Martin moved to Kentucky from Europe and married a complete stranger, a nonrelative who just happened to have the same mutation," says Lewis. What Happened to the Blue People? Stacy recalls that his father-inlaw, Levy Fugate, was part of the family that showed blue. Where is this area located in eastern KY? He married a red-haired American named Elizabeth Smith who had a very pale complexion and their union formed a genetic mutation that resulted in their descendants being born with blue skin. She told me that her family was the blue Combses who lived up on Ball Creek. Well, there are more intriguing blue things in Kentucky than just the moon. God Bless America. "I started asking them questions: 'Do you have any relatives who are blue?' Finally, one day when the frustrated doctor was idling inside the Hazard clinic, Patrick and Rachel Ritchie walked in. She had been out in the cold and she was just blue! recalls Pendergrass, who is now 69 and retired from nursing. Since there werent any roads or trains near their small community, the kidswere married off to the only people who lived nearby: their cousins. Answer (1 of 3): Depends on what you mean by blue. Blood is also likely to be a chocolate brown color instead of bright red in patients with methemoglobinemia. Genetic Causes Woodburn Hall at West Virginia University in Morgantown (old gold and blue are the official University colors); photo by Swimmerguy269 on Wikipedia (use permitted with attribution / share alike). The risk skyrockets if you're sharing blood.". References When asked ahout it, he shakes his head and stares steadfastly ahead. If theyd immigrated to other areas, even other areas of Kentucky, they likely would have married non-relatives, and the condition would have faded out of the family long before it did. What he got from Martin Fugate was dark blue skin. The Registered Agent on file for this company is Mikeooney. Cawein, Madison, et. If enough blood is "infected" with this faulty type of hemoglobin, it changes from red to an almost purple-ish dark blue. My grandmother Luna on my dads side was a blue Fugate. Everyone knew the blue Fugates were healthy people. Settling in the remote hills of Kentucky, there werent a lot of other people nearby, and marrying people who were closely related became common among the Fugates. The reasons for this almost have to do entirely with coal. When Two Strangers Lost the Genetic Lottery Martin Fugate arrived in the unsettled frontier of Kentucky in 1820. When you look at the numbers, its clear that most of Moundsville is a buncha fun-lovin rednecks. The Faces of Appalachia. it is a blood disorder in which their blood does not oxygenate correctly. Intermarrying with people other than close relatives meant the likelihood of any Fugate descendant being born with the condition reduced. The search for blue people ensued. All lived in isolation from the world, bunched in log cabins up and down the hollows, and so it was only natural that a boy married the girl next door, even if she had the same last name. Archives of Internal Medicine, April, 1964.2. It was hard to get out, so they intermarried, says Dennis Stacy, a 51-year-old coal miner and amateur genealogist who has filled a loose-leaf notebook with the laboriously traced blood lines of several local families. Levy married a Ritchie girl and bought 200 acres of rolling land along Ball Creek. Then he began to construct the family genealogy and traced their roots back to Martin and Elizabeth Fugate. 8 November 2021. The state capital is Charleston. 11 HINTS YOU MIGHT BE DESCENDED FROM ALIENS, FUGATES OF KENTUCKY: SKIN BLUER THAN LAKE LOUISE As My World Turns, If Your Skin Is Blue, Dont Marry Your Other Blue Shaded Relative interesting12, Daily News investigates: Mystery of family with blue skin solved | Bazaar Daily News, If Your Skin Is Blue, Don't Marry Your Other Blue Shaded Relative - interesting12. As a bonus, theres a Golden Corral, several Dollar Stores and many Waffle Houses in the area. It's a vote cast not just out of allegiance. Eventually, a nurse named Ruth Pendergrass heard of them, and, along with a hematologist named Madison Cawein III, decided to go meet these locally famous blue people in person. Luna was bluish all over. It was caused, Scott speculated, by an absence of the enzyme diaphorase from their red blood cells. Madison Cawein began hearing rumors about the blue people when he went to work at the University of Kentuckys Lexington medical clinic in 1960. Stacy counts Fugate blood in his own veins. Dark blue lips and fingernails are the only traces of Martin Fugates legacy left in the boy; that, and the recessive gene that has shaded many of the Fugates and their kin blue for the past 162 years. Cawein would have no part of it, and he related with glee the news that a film crew sent to Kentucky from Hollywood fled the two mean dogs in every front yard without any film. Her name was Ruth Pendergrass, and she had been trying to stir up medical interest in the blue people ever since a dark blue woman walked into the county health department one bitterly cold afternoon and asked for a blood test. She also states that the union of Martin and Elizabeth were probably not the originators of the gene as their marriage took place too late. Only adopted cousins are allowed to marry, while in Vermont, Virginia, and many other states, first cousins can tie the knot. Laughing, the Informant launched into a story of the "West Virginia Blue People", a story about a genetic condition the resulted from intermarriage. The blue skin gene is a recessive gene that only appears when both parents are carriers of the gene. One could inherit the gene, not get the blood disorder, but pass the gene on to a child. West Virginians became the prototypical hillbillies, and incest served as a crude scientific explanation for their downtrodden social condition. Blah. Mountain People. Despite those incredible odds, this is exactly what happened with the Fugates. While not every Fugate child was born with the condition, as genes express themselves differently in different people, enough were that locals began to take notice. Written family records do not indicate Martin's skin color, but family legend says he was blue. The last known "blue" Fugate descendant was born in 1975. And when you look at the data, its clear this is a really solid place for a redneck to make home. It has nothing to do with melanin, the amino acid that gives people darker skin tones. In the 1880s and 1890s, writers such as Mary Noailles Murfree and John Fox Jr. traveled across Appalachia, looking for local color, and overstated the degree to which mountain populations lived in isolation. Blue human aren't possible. 1995-2022 Ancestral Findings, LLC. It's true that, through the 19 th century, transportation networks developed slowly in the rugged, westernmost portion of Virginia (incorporated as West Virginia in 1863). Benjy was a pretty big item in the hospital, his mother says with a grin. It doesnt mean the condition is gone from the family; theres a chance another child could be born with it, but the incidents of it should be fewer and farther between in the modern era. The Wilson Family of West Virginia. Martin Fugate carried the recessive gene and the odds that he could have married a woman with the same recessive gene were overwhelming - but that is exactly what happened. Then, in 2004, Abercrombie & Fitch released a T-shirt emblazoned with a map of the Appalachian state and the words Its all relative in West Virginia. In February, a casting director for the upcoming thriller Shelter put out a call for extras with unusual body shapes, [and] even physical abnormalities to depict West Virginia mountain people. The gene is still around today but has now become statistically insignificant and there are no serious medical problems associated with it. The Fugates, a family living in the hills of Kentucky starting in the 19th century, were commonly known as the " Blue Fugates " [1] or the " Blue People of Kentucky ". New Martinsville is located in the northwestern part of the state, right on the Ohio state line. It wasn't always this way. And a sense that President . They sing in the Stacy Family Gospel Band and have provided their children with a beautiful home and a menagerie of pets, including horses. They went over to Patrick and Rachel Ritchies house and injected each of them with 100 milligrams of methylene blue. All rights reserved. If the condition were inherited as a recessive trait, it would appear most often in an inbred line. It's also, in part, out of fear. Google Maps, KCR Barrel Saloon, Charles Town, WV. The doctor was recently approached by the producers of the television show Thats Incredible. They wanted to parade the blue people across the screen in their weekly display of human oddities. We just have our own way of life. THE town of Odd, West Virginia is a quiet, rural countryside, despite all the buzz surrounding the infamous inbred family, The Whittakers, who live within it. Old color photographs of the family clearly show about half of the members to have a distinct cobalt blue skin color, while the other have regular white skin color. His lips and fingernails still turn a shade of purple-blue when he gets cold or angry a quirk that so intrigued medical students after Benjy's birth that they would crowd around the baby and try to make him cry. H & S Sporting Goods, Princeton, WV. Google Maps. The Fugate family of Kentucky has been known for their blue skin color for generations. March 8, 2012— -- Kerry Green was a "blue baby," born in 1964 in Tulsa, Okla., and his family was given little hope that he would live because of a malformed aorta. Because the boy was intensely blue at birth but then recovered his normal skin tones, Benjy is assumed to have inherlted only one gene for the condition. The following piece was collected at a dinner table with a group of girls out celebrating a friends birthday. Finding it ridiculous herself, the Informant told me that she still enjoys being a part of the joke. June 18, 2015. As scientists discovered in the 1960s, the mutation that causes the Smurf-like skin is carried by a recessive gene, and it takes two people with that same gene to produce a blue child. Dunlaps Gun & Pawn, Hurricane, WV. Some of us finished high school and became the "dreaded wife and mother"-as society portrays it. So is the Walmart factor, which is the number of Walmarts per person. Well, as you can imagine, I really examined them. Two days of tests produced no explanation for skin the color of a bruised plum. Since rail lines and paved roads didn't make it out to Troublesome Creek for nearly a century, the blue recessive gene was passed down to generations of Fugates and neighboring families, all of whom came to be known as "the blue people of Kentucky.". Admitted to the union as the 35th state in 1863, it is a relatively small state. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Two YouTubers have shared an inside look into Odd as they documented themselves traveling down a windy two-lane road. Buckhannon is a town thats 95% white, where 3 out of 10 people didnt graduate from high school. The good news for those who may still be born expressing the blue gene is that there is a treatment. Methemoglobin which is blue, is a nonfunctional form of the red hemoglobin that carries oxygen. Theres a debate as to what percentage of Hurricane is white. At the National Press Club on Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney noted that his maternal grandmother is descended from someone named Cheney, then quipped, So we had Cheneys on both sides of the familyand we dont even live in West Virginia. (Click here for a video.) Elkins is way out in the middle of nowhere south of Morgantown, at the base of the Appalachians. The company's principal address is Tuckers Run Rd . We see fit that they will grow up to be strong holler girls or boys. So you can tell if someone is a product of incest if their skin is blue! Sometimes, it can be really faint though, so you have to look closely at their lips or fingernails. She shuns modern conveniences. the blue color was gone from their skin," Cawein said. The Fugate Family of Russell County, Virginia: A Genealogy of the Descendants of Francis, Benjamin, Colbert, Zachariah, Henley & William Fugate, Settlers of Moccasin Valley from 1772. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[580,400],'roadsnacks_net-medrectangle-3','ezslot_0',606,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-roadsnacks_net-medrectangle-3-0');Using that criteria, its not hard to scrape the internet, run some scientific data on where rednecks might live in West Virginia, and then put out a list. "Within a few minutes. Fear that more inflation will cost jobs. John Stacy still lives on Lick Branch of Ball Creek. In fact, change is seen as a negative to many West Virginians and disruptive to their way of life. Add to calendar. 20 Fine Arts Drive, Morgantown, WV 26506. https://artmuseum.wvu.edu. Come on, Grafton rednecks. With Fugate blood on both his mothers and his fathers side, the boy could have received genes for the enzyme deficiency from either direction. A transfusion was being prepared when Benjys grandmother spoke up. Her lips were as dark as a bruise. As it was, the Fugates stayed in the same area well into the 20th century. The family was first discovered in 1958 when one of the blue men, Luke Combs, who was a descendant of another branch of the Fugate family, took his white wife to the University of Kentucky Hospital and doctors paid more attention to him than his wife. The Derby Bar & Grill, Fairmount, WV. He was born in the 1970s in a maternity ward of Hazard, Kentucky. Luna Stacy possessed the good health common to the blue people, bearing at least 13 children before she died at 84. One relative describes her as blue all over, and another calls Luna the bluest woman I ever saw.. The expedition descended that river to Peter's Falls on the future Virginia-West Virginia border and claimed for England all the land drained by the New River and its tributaries. You couldve done even better than that. Give the gift of knowledge with our official 'did you know' book. What neither she nor Martin could have known is that they both carried the recessive gene for a rare hereditary blood disorder called methemoglobinemia. One of the supermarket tabloids once sent a reporter to find out about the blue people, and she was distressed with his preoccupation with intermarriages. The condition that made the Fugates blue causes large amounts of methemoglobin (which is a blue type of hemoglobin) to circulate in the blood. Eventually, Cawein gained their trust and began taking blood samples. And shop at Walmart. We threw a lot of criteria at this one in order to get the best, most complete results possible. The famous painting of the blue Fugates is not based on an actual family photograph, but was a composite illustration created by artist Walt Spitzmiller for a 1982 magazine article. He came from where the sun don't shine. Legend has it that Martin himself may have had a blue tinge to his skin, but not the dark blue color of later Fugates. Most of the Fugates didnt seem to mind being blue. Blow your mind. This is redneck wonderland. The strain of inherited blue began to disappear as the recessive gene spread to families where it was unlikely to be paired with a similar gene. In 1820, Martin Fugate, who is believed to have been blue, moved to Troublesome Creek from France and just happened to shack up with Elizabeth Smith, who also carried the gene. If their blood had a lower concentration of methemoglobin, they might only blush blue in cold weather, while people with higher concentrations of methemoglobin were bright blue from head to toe. the mans picture at the bottom got his unusual color from taking silver nitrate which will turn anyone blue if it is taken over a long period of time. Benjy Stacy is one of the last of the blue Fugates. They are known for being carriers of a genetic trait that led to the blood disorder methemoglobinemia, causing the skin to appear blue. Big deal, ive got an extra thumb, and twelve toes, but at least my parents didnt know they were twins until after they had me. Dr. Cawein injected the dye into the volunteers, and they were amazed to see how quickly their skin changed from blue to a healthy pink, then gradually to a Caucasian white. type to search . For more than a century, these Appalachian families passed along an exceedingly rare genetic blood condition that turned their skin a disarming shade of blue. Laurel Wheeler and family, Buena Vista, Rockbridge County, Virginia. It is the color of oxygen-depleted blood seen in the blue veins just below the skin. Population: 7,164Mobile home parks per capita: 2nd in West VirginiaBars per capita: 2nd in the stateWalmart rank: 3rd. 15,898 100 A Cinephile's Guide to Biographical Films. "But if you're marrying your cousin, it's one in eight. Elkins Journeez Bar, Elkins, WV. The Blue Ridge Mountains In West Virginia Were Named One Of The 50 Most Beautiful Places In The World We all know the Blue Ridge Mountains in West Virginia are stunning, and it's about time the rest of the world took notice. The clan kept multiplying. If this story were true everyone in Alabama would be blue. Howells Pawn and Guns, New Martinsville, WV. While the substance isnt harmful, large amounts of it will tint any tissue that has blood flowing to it a blue color. If youre curious enough, here are the least redneck places in West Virginia (if thats even possible): We aim to deliver infotainment about where you live that your real estate agent won't tell you. Bessie had an iron pot of clothes boiling in her front yard, but she graciously allowed the doctor to draw some of her blood. Have you ever heard the song, Blue Moon of Kentucky? Its pretty well-known and popular. Its 97% white, very blue collar, and there are lots of places to get guns, ammo and chew. Google Maps. Population: 18,763Bars per capita: 6th in West VirginiaFishing/bait shops per capita: 4thMobile home parks per capita: 5th. Normally diaphorase converts methemoglobin back to hemoglobin. Population: 10,486Mobile home parks in area: 3rd in WVBars per capita: 3rdGun stores per capita: 5th in West Virginia. By the time a young hematologist from the University of Kentucky came down to Troublesome Creek in the 1960s to cure the blue people, Martin Fugates descendants had multiplied their recessive genes all over the Cumberland Plateau. The area was never. When Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy was born in 1975, nurses and doctors were shocked and confused. Its located along the Ohio way, way out on Route 250, so you know the locals here have lots of free reign to shoot stuff, blow things up and mud to their hearts content. The female's primary color is light cinnamon with darker-colored wings. The condition was clearly genetic, but the key for Cawein was reading reports of hereditary methemoglobinemia among isolated Inuit populations in Alaska where blood relatives often married. Note: In this instance the reason for cyanosis was not methemoglobinemia but Rh incompatibility. Book is out of print, borrowed from Special Collections at the St. Louis County Library, St. Louis, MO. You know theres lots of rednecks here when you look at the numbers. See the video below. Cawein cheers their bad luck not out of malice but out of a deep respect for the blue people of Troublesome Creek. He hasnt studied the condition for years. valley in the mountains in West Virginia with a barn and cows visible Stephanie Pittman 561 followers More information Blue People of West Virginia | . Typically, the blue is isolated to one part of the body. He married Elizabeth Smith, who carried a recessive gene for a genetic condition called methemoglobinemia, which gives those who have it blue-toned skin, even though they are otherwise perfectly healthy. Between 1880 and 1920, southern West Virginia's population grew from 93,000 to 446,000, due almost entirely to the coal industry. For more West Virginia reading, check out: In order to rank the most redneck cities in West Virginia, we had to determine what criteria makes a redneck. I looked at other enzymes and nothing was wrong with them. By Jamie Kiffel-Alcheh Fast Facts Nickname: The Mountain State Statehood: 1863; 35th state Population (as of July, 2016): 1,831,102. 3 of 10 isnt good enough; think of how high you wouldve finished on this list had more of you ditched class to head to the hills on Friday mornings like a lot of your friends. Benjy lost his blue tint within a few weeks, and now he is about as normal looking a seven-year-old boy as you could hope to find. Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article: Dave Roos It can be brought on by several things: abnormal hemoglobin formation, an enzyme deficiency, and taking too much of certain drugs, including vitamin K, which is essential for blood clotting and is abundant in pork liver and vegetable oil. The only real picture is of a man who turned himself blue by eating silver. The antidote worked quickly but patients were required to take daily doses as it passed quickly through the urine. nutsy card game,
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