In more recent memory, the 2003 film Wrong Turn helped perpetuate the inbreeding stereotype. Martin and Elizabeth had seven children, four being born blue; Zachariah, who was blue, married his mother's sister. In the Inuit communities, scientists had pinpointed the problem, a deficiency of an enzyme that converted methemoglobin to hemoglobin. The risk skyrockets if you're sharing blood.". They took the doctor to see their uncle, who was blue, too. Admitted to the union as the 35th state in 1863, it is a relatively small state. The Derby Bar & Grill, Fairmount, WV. Dating back to the early 1800s, an isolated family in eastern Kentucky who can trace their roots back to a French orphan started producing children who were blue. Martin and Elizabeth had seven children, four of whom were "bright blue" according to Fugate family lore. I can see that old blue running out of my skin, he confided. What Happened to the Blue People? "She had been out in the cold and she was just blue!" recalls Pendergrass, who is now 69 and retired from nursing. When you click through real estate links on our site, we earn an affiliate commission. 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. Besides the number of bars, mobile home parks and places to buy shotguns, its at the base of the hills, where you know the deer and turkey probably walk right into town. Some sites say 100%. In the isolated hollows of rural Kentucky, they were known as the blue Fugates and the blue Combses. So you can tell if someone is a product of incest if their skin is blue! Most of them old people went by that name the blue Fugates. For some, though, there was a pain not seen in lab tests. Have you ever heard of the blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek? she asked the doctors. Inbreeding in eastern Kentucky has been turning offspring blue since the early 1880s. The entry was on the blue men, not of West Virginia, but of the Mountain State's neighbor, Kentucky, . During the same time period, missionaries reported pervasive ignorance and poverty, with large families living together in ramshackle cabins. Embarrassed by their bluish hue, the families retreated even further from society, which only exacerbated the problem. Martin and Elizabeth had seven children, four being born blue; Zachariah, who was blue, married his mother's sister. She gets upset at all the talk of inbreeding among the Fugates. The blue Fugates who did not wish to remain blue continued to take the pills, and contacted Dr. Cawein and other doctors to get more of them when needed. Give the gift of knowledge with our official 'did you know' book. In the early 1960's, this blue malady caught the attention of Madison Cawein, an inquisitive hematologist from the University of Kentucky. When Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy was born in 1975, nurses and doctors were shocked and confused. Population: 10,486Mobile home parks in area: 3rd in WVBars per capita: 3rdGun stores per capita: 5th in West Virginia. 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. When you look at the numbers, its clear that most of Moundsville is a buncha fun-lovin rednecks. She was a sister to one of the Fugate women. About this same time, another of the blue Combses, named Luke, had taken his sick wife up to the clinic at Lexington. 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. It was caused, Scott speculated, by an absence of the enzyme diaphorase from their red blood cells. 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. The area was never entirely cut off, but many people lived in remote closed communities with little incoming or outgoing migration. Zach took the doctor even farther up Copperhead Hollow to see his Aunt Bessie Fugate, who was blue. Martin Fugate was a French orphan who emigrated to Kentucky in 1820 to claim a land grant on the wilderness banks of Troublesome Creek. The Appalachian region of the US is a beautiful place with a rich and sometimes tragic history. Her face and her fingernails were almost indigo blue. "They vary in color from white to black, often have blue eyes and straight hair, and they are generally industrious. Curiosity drove him to Hazard where he was introduced to a nurse, Ruth Pendergrass, who had met a "dark blue" woman. By Jamie Kiffel-Alcheh Fast Facts Nickname: The Mountain State Statehood: 1863; 35th state Population (as of July, 2016): 1,831,102. Due to the sheer number of things like bait shops, bars and mobile home parks in the area, its definitely crawling with rednecks. astounding ignorance toward his own countrymen, [are neither] unique [n]or particularly common to the region. After concluding that there was no evidence of heart disease, I said Aha! I started asking them questions: Do you have any relatives who are blue? then I sat down and we began to chart the family., Cawein remembers the pain that showed on the Ritchie brothers and sisters faces. In normal people hemoglobin is converted to methemoglobin at a very slow rate. So I knew we had the defect defined.. It was painful. It run in that generation who lived up and down Ball [Creek]., They looked like anybody else, cept they had the blue color, Stacy says, sitting in a chair in his plaid flannel shirt and suspenders, next to a cardboard box where a small black piglet, kept as a pet, is squealing for his bottle. Methemoglobinemia is a rare hereditary blood disorder that results from excess levels of methomoglobin (metHb) in the blood. That five-star symbol is the same as the one on the Friendly City flagwhich is drawing approval well outside of West Virginia. It is documented that Fugates were born in the colonies in the mid 1600's but the original progenitor has not been confirmed. Ask the Explainer. Within a few minutes. Hereditary diaphorase deficiency and methemoglobinemia. Regardless, this place might be the whitest, redneckest of them all. 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. This then turns the carriers blood into a normal red hue which is then reflected in a change in skin tone. Population: 7,164 Mobile home parks per capita: 2nd in West Virginia Bars per capita: 2nd in the state Walmart rank: 3rd Elkins is way out in the middle of nowhere south of Morgantown, at the base of the Appalachians. Is there anything really wrong with being called a West Virginia redneck? Levy married a Ritchie girl and bought 200 acres of rolling land along Ball Creek. If enough blood is "infected" with this faulty type of hemoglobin, it changes from red to an almost purple-ish dark blue. A mutated gene causes their bodies to build up a rare form of hemoglobin called methemoglobin that can't bond with oxygen. One relative describes her as blue all over, and another calls Luna the bluest woman I ever saw.. Come on, Grafton rednecks. Despite those incredible odds, this is exactly what happened with the Fugates. Google Maps, KCR Barrel Saloon, Charles Town, WV. martin fugate was blue from birth, which has nothing to do with inbreeding. Cawein, in researching the family lines in Perry County, Kentucky and with the help of Fugate Family Bibles, found in fact, that the Fugates had married Fugates, had married first cousins, and had intermarried with families whose surnames were: Combs, Smith, Ritchie, and Stacy. This led to the propagation of the genetic condition that gave them their distinctive blue skin color. Appearance: Blue grosbeaks are medium birds about 8 long, large, bright blue, with large silver bills, and chestnut wingbars. The clan kept multiplying. Population: 5,191High school graduation rate: 70%Walmart rank: 4thDive bars and mobile home parks: 7th. A lot of nice farmland was lost to the lake over the . If youre analyzing smaller cities in West Virginia with blue collar workers, where people have lots of options for drinking, smoking, hunting and Walmarting, this is an accurate list. "They were bluer'n hell," said Cawein in a 1982 interview with Science 82. The boy inherited his fathers lankiness and his mothers slightly nasal way of speaking. Dern it, Princeton. He helped isolate an antidote for cholera, and he did some of the early work on L-dopa, the drug for Parkinsons disease. Note: In this instance the reason for cyanosis was not methemoglobinemia but Rh incompatibility. West Virginia, constituent state of the United States of America. avg. They werent sick; it was just the way they look. For the Fugates, family members expressed the gene to varying degrees. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Little did they know that their union would create shades of blue people! 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. Doctors were so astonished by the color of Benjy Stacys skin that they raced him by ambulance from the maternity ward in the hospital near Hazard to a medical clinic in Lexington. This results in brown blood giving Caucasian patients a bluish hue to their skin. Theyre known simply as the blue people in the hills and hollows around Troublesome and Ball Creeks. Sometimes they married first cousins. get your facts straight for petes sake. But as Kentucky became more populated and more genes came into the Fugate family tree, there were far fewer children born blue. 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