The Fugate family didnt leave the area for generations, continually intermarrying with relatives. However, only 89% are white, and a whopping 83% finished high school. Theyre known simply as the blue people in the hills and hollows around Troublesome and Ball Creeks. Oxygen, or a lack of oxygen, is what turns the blood from red to blue in people with methemoglobinemia. Buckhannon is a town thats 95% white, where 3 out of 10 people didnt graduate from high school. Incredibly, Benjy had inherited a gene dating back over 162 years! If enough blood is "infected" with this faulty type of hemoglobin, it changes from red to an almost purple-ish dark blue. Appearance: Blue grosbeaks are medium birds about 8 long, large, bright blue, with large silver bills, and chestnut wingbars. While the substance isn't harmful, large amounts of it will tint any tissue that has blood flowing to it a blue color. Sometimes they married first cousins. 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. Why can colloidal silver turn your skin blue? It can make a claim that it should top this list, since it has the most people. score: 5 of 27 (18%) required scores: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 list stats leaders vote Vote print comments. Finally, one day when the frustrated doctor was idling inside the Hazard clinic, Patrick and Rachel Ritchie walked in. God Bless America. February 16, 2012 by Tap Vann. A stance in favor of new abortion restrictions. Benjy was born in a maternity ward near Hazard, Kentucky and was rushed by ambulance to a medical clinic in Lexington to find help for his blue problem. The gene is still around today but has now become statistically insignificant and there are no serious medical problems associated with it. The topographic boundary was modified where Route 9 crossed the watershed divide. Blue skin. But as Kentucky became more populated and more genes came into the Fugate family tree, there were far fewer children born blue. This information supplied by John Graves whose uncle was the father of the child. When young people started moving away from the farms surrounding Troublesome Creek in the mid-20th century, they took their recessive blue genes with them. Others, however, did not like being blue, and it was these Fugates, who didnt like their blue coloring, who were the first to volunteer for Caweins experimental treatments. Research on intrafamilial marriage in such enclaves is slim. 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. And a Walmart all to their own. The inbreeding caused the recessive gene to appear in both parents. Stacy counts Fugate blood in his own veins. 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. It's a vote cast not just out of allegiance. Finding it ridiculous herself, the Informant told me that she still enjoys being a part of the joke. Typically, the blue is isolated to one part of the body. Mary Fugate said that the gene is very dominant in the Smith line but there is still no concrete answers as to what couple started the shades of blue people. Luna has been dead nearly 20 years now, but her widower survives. then I sat down and we began to chart the family." She has lived in the primitive dwelling without running water or electricity on the slopes of Dead Fall Mountain her entire life. Eventually, the recessive gene began to disappear once coal mining and the railroad opened the community to outsiders. The risk skyrockets if you're sharing blood.". ELVIS SEEN AT GRACELAND ON HIS 85th BIRTHDAY! The first known ancestor was David Wilson, who was born in Scotland about 1650; he had a son David, born about . And shop at Walmart. As a bonus, theres a Golden Corral, several Dollar Stores and many Waffle Houses in the area. Cancel any time, no strings attached. He remembered that the Ritchie siblings "were really embarrassed about being blue." Fugates married other Fugates. He was a French orphan who knew nothing of his lineage. Diet: Insects, seeds, and grains. 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. 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. Her face and her fingernails were almost indigo blue. They wouldnt come into the waiting room. So, youd think people who are rednecks would be proud to be called a redneck. Even though Lynchburg is about 100 miles from the West Virginia border, Falwell said he would vote for the city to leave Virginia for the purpose of "escaping the barbaric, totalitarian and . 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. The man who discovered the cure for methemoglobinemia was Madison Cawein III, a hematologist (blood doctor) at the University of Kentucky who heard tales of the "blue people" and went looking for specimens in the 1960s. After analyzing all cities with a decent amount of people in them, we came up with this list as The Most Redneck Cities in West Virginia: Many of these are types of places where old redneck ladies drive their motorized wheelchairs down the middle of town, towing their grandkids in a wagon. Learn how your comment data is processed. A mutated gene causes their bodies to build up a rare form of hemoglobin called methemoglobin that can't bond with oxygen. The search for blue people ensued. Methemoglobinemia is a blood condition, not a skin condition. My first reaction to this story was wondering whether there was a scientific reason, or condition perhaps, that acted as a precursor to this belief of a skin condition that was a result of incest. Written family records do not indicate Martin's skin color, but family legend says he was blue. We use data, analytics, and a sense of humor to determine the dirt on places across the country. You know theres lots of rednecks here when you look at the numbers. As the story goes, Martin Fugate, a French orphan, settled on the banks of eastern Kentucky's Troublesome Creek around 1820 to claim a land grant. the blue color was gone from their skin," Cawein said. Ballengee testified in earlier civil depositions. It's also, in part, out of fear. For the Fugates, family members expressed the gene to varying degrees. Blue human aren't possible. H & S Sporting Goods, Princeton, WV. And by God, they didnt have the enzyme diaphorase. Despite those incredible odds, this is exactly what happened with the Fugates. This led to the propagation of the genetic condition that gave them their distinctive blue skin color. Google Maps. T he West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has emerged as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the passing of Joe Biden's ambitious domestic agenda, declaring he will vote against a key voting. 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. Sit back, relax, and read the amazing but true genetic tale of the Blue People of Kentucky. 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 Benjys birth that they would crowd around the baby and try to make him cry. Note: In this instance the reason for cyanosis was not methemoglobinemia but Rh incompatibility. He was involved as a law enforcement officer in the Hatfield-McCoy Feud, the West Virginia Mine Wars and the destruction of moonshine stills. 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. This then turns the carriers blood into a normal red hue which is then reflected in a change in skin tone. And a sense that President . Benjy was a pretty big item in the hospital, his mother says with a grin. They were bluern hell, Cawein says. So is the Walmart factor, which is the number of Walmarts per person. "They vary in color from white to black, often have blue eyes and straight hair, and they are generally industrious. Cawein is no stranger to eccentricities of the body. Such people tend to be very blue only at birth, probably because newborns normally have smaller amounts of diaphorase. "Methomoglobin is an oxidized form of hemoglobin that has a decreased affinity for oxygen, resulting in a reduced ability to release oxygen to tissues." 7000 BC: Archaic Period in which people built basic shelters and made stone weapons and stone tools At 30%, nausea, difficulty breathing, and an elevated heart rate start to appear. Population: 5,373Tobacco stores per capita: 5th in West VirginiaGun stores per capita: 2ndFishing/bait shops per capita: 2nd. West By God is right. In the Inuit communities, scientists had pinpointed the problem, a deficiency of an enzyme that converted methemoglobin to hemoglobin. That iron atom binds with oxygen, which is how red blood cells circulate oxygen throughout the body. It began whenMartin Fugate, aFrench orphan, settled on the banks of eastern Kentuckys Troublesome Creek to claim a land grant in the early 19th century. In alphabetical order, these counties are: Barbour, Berkeley, Boone, Braxton, Brooke, Cabell, Calhoun, Clay, Doddridge, Fayette, Gilmer, Grant, Greenbrier, Hampshire, Hancock, Hardy, Harrison, Jackson, Jefferson, Kanawha, Lewis, Lincoln, Logan, Marion, Marshall, Mason, McDowell, Mercer, Mineral, Mingo, Monongalia, Monroe, Morgan, Nicholas, Ohio, There was always speculation in the hollows about what made the blue people blue: heart disease, a lung disorder, the possibility proposed by one old-timer that their blood is just a little closer to their skin. But no one knew for sure, and doctors rarely paid visits to the remote creekside settlements where most of the blue Fugates lived until well into the 1950s. WHEELING, W.Va. (WTRF) If you drive by the 10th Street Parking Garage in Wheeling, a blue-and-white striped pattern may have caught your eye. He injected the Ritchie siblings with 100 milligrams of the blue dye and didn't have to wait long to see results. Add to calendar. Curiosity drove him to Hazard where he was introduced to a nurse, Ruth Pendergrass, who had met a "dark blue" woman. 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. Population: 6,306Walmart rank: 2ndMobile home parks: 5th in the stateBars per person: 5th in West Virginia. The only real picture is of a man who turned himself blue by eating silver. This results in brown blood giving Caucasian patients a bluish hue to their skin. Wheeling's city flag checks all the boxes for an [] 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. In the early 1960's, this blue malady caught the attention of Madison Cawein, an inquisitive hematologist from the University of Kentucky. Martin Fugate, who was orphaned as a child in France, began the American Fugate clan. Days of testing provided no answers; but then Benjy's grandmother told the doctor a story about the "blue" Fugates. They went over to Patrick and Rachel Ritchies house and injected each of them with 100 milligrams of methylene blue. More than a cent. One of em I remember seeing him when I was just a boy Blue Anze, they called him. Bluefield State is committed to being the region's leading institution of higher education. Blue Hole, West Virginia GPS Coordinates to Blue hole 39.594754,-79.748120 Some of us finished high school and became the "dreaded wife and mother"-as society portrays it. 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. Houses belonging to people that lived in the valley were mostly torn down. When Eleanor Roosevelt visited West Virginia mining towns in the 1930s, national newspapers ran pictures of rundown shacks and barefoot kids in rags, which left a lasting impression of the state as a backwater. "They were bluer'n hell," said Cawein in a 1982 interview with Science 82. his wife happened to be a carrier for the gene, so in turn about half of their children were blue. Blood is also likely to be a chocolate brown color instead of bright red in patients with methemoglobinemia. Six generations after a French orphan named Martin Fugate settled on the banks of eastern Kentuckys Troublesome Creek with his redheaded American bride, his great-great-great great grandson was born in a modern hospital not far from where the creek still runs. Legend has it that Martin himself may have had a blue tinge to his skin, but not the dark blue color of later Fugates. Blue Grass Riding Club Of West Virginia, Inc. is a West Virginia Domestic Profit Corporation filed on January 19, 1965. The clinic doctors only saw her a few times in her life and never for anything serious. The lightness or darkness of the blue depends on the amount of the substance the person has circulating in them from birth. The odds against it were incalculable, but Martin Fugate managed to find and marry a woman who carried the same recessive gene. Levy married a Ritchie girl and bought 200 acres of rolling land along Ball Creek. Little Blue Run in Chester West Virginia is gone 8/8/2004: The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes about Little Blue Run: Dangerous disposal, by Alyson Walls . Set in West Virginia, it features cannibalistic mountain men, horribly disfigured from generations of incest. In 1980, a counter-intuitive solution was discovered where the blue person drinks a chemical-filled solution that is itself blue. the blue color was gone from their skin, the doctor said. It is the color of oxygen-depleted blood seen in the blue veins just below the skin. Activating it requires adding to the blood a substance that acts as an electron donor. Many substances do this, but Cawein chose methylene blue because it had been used successfully and safely in other cases and because it acts quickly. He was born in the 1970s in a maternity ward of Hazard, Kentucky. Give the gift of knowledge with our official 'did you know' book. West Virginia History Timeline. Normally diaphorase converts methemoglobin back to hemoglobin. "I started asking them questions: 'Do you have any relatives who are blue?' By the end of this spectacular journey, you'll be saying "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT JUST HAPPENED BUT I LOOOVED IT." Read more Blue Man Group 4,830 reviews What is a redneck anyways? Luna Stacy possessed the good health common to the blue people, bearing at least 13 children before she died at 84. 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. Folklore maintained the Fugates were blue due to heart disease or lung problems. When Two Strangers Lost the Genetic Lottery Martin Fugate arrived in the unsettled frontier of Kentucky in 1820. There was a Zachariah Fugate who was married to a Mary Smith; both carried the gene which resulted in blue children. She and her husband Alva have a strong sense of family. Martin Fugate arrived in the unsettled frontier of Kentucky in 1820. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Had you guys just ditched school even more, you might have won this whole thing. Its common. It was caused, Scott speculated, by an absence of the enzyme diaphorase from their red blood cells. 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. He had to drive eight hours back to Hazard to search out the Ritchies, who lived in a tapped-out mining town called Hardburly. For the first time in their lives, they were pink. If this conversion continued, all the bodys hemoglobin would eventually be rendered useless. Admitted to the union as the 35th state in 1863, it is a relatively small state. It was almost purple, his father recalls. Blue People of Kentucky Why the Fugate Family Had Blue SkinA Frenchman arrived in Kentucky in 1820, bringing with him his strange blue skin. Several familes moved elsewhere after being bought out. Blue Man Group will rock your world. Population: 9,277High school graduation rate 73%Chew factor: 3Gun stores: 5th. Oh, and they had blue skin. The blue skin gene is a recessive gene that only appears when both parents are carriers of the gene. he passed the gene on to his children. Today I have a healthy son/nephew who is slightly green in skincolor. Martin and Elizabeth had seven children, four being born blue; Zachariah, who was blue, married his mother's sister. 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. West Virginia Get facts and photos about the 35th state. When asked ahout it, he shakes his head and stares steadfastly ahead. Inbreeding in eastern Kentucky has been turning offspring blue since the early 1880s. Methemoglobinemia is one of the rare genetic conditions that's treatable with a simple pill. Well, according to the official bible of literature, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a redneck is: A white person who lives in a small town or in the country especially in the southern U.S., who typically has a working-class job, and who is seen by others as being uneducated and having opinions and attitudes that are offensive.. Elizabeth Smith, apparently, was as pale-skinned as the mountain laurel that blooms every spring around the creek hollows. When they settled this country back then, there was no roads. Luke was just as blue as Lake Louise on a cool summer day, doctor Charles H. Behlen II told the Tri-City Herald in 1974. 2 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. 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.) Have you ever heard of the blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek? she asked the doctors. Heres their story. Grafton has the highest percentage of its population that didnt finish high school. 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. And unleash your spirit. The region's first coal miners primarily were African Americans, both enslaved and free. In normal people hemoglobin is converted to methemoglobin at a very slow rate. 10,000 BC: Paleo-Indian Era (Stone Age culture) the earliest human inhabitants of America who lived in caves and were Nomadic hunters of large game including the Great Mammoth and giant bison. 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. One day, one of the older mountain men cornered the doctor. Hilda Stacy (nee Godsey) is fiercely protective of her son. The Blue People of Kentucky were first diagnosed with methemoglobinemia in the 1960s by Dr. Madison Cawein, a noted hematologist. A transfusion was being prepared when Benjys grandmother spoke up. The condition that made the Fugates blue causes large amounts of methemoglobin (which is a blue type of hemoglobin) to circulate in the blood. He hasnt studied the condition for years. Hereditary diaphorase deficiency and methemoglobinemia. 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. Definitely not a poaching bunch, these Hurricane rednecks. West Virginia: County: Tyler: Elevation. West Virginia's House congressional districts run from east to west, creating a three-way split that fractures pockets of blue support in the far northern and southwestern parts of the state . He knew the same thing was happening in this secluded corner of Appalachia. 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. Dunlaps Gun & Pawn, Hurricane, WV. He married a red-haired American named Elizabeth Smith with a very pale complexion. Before people knew what was going on they described the Fugates and others like them as looking: like anybody else, cept they had the blue color, Bluern hell, indigo blue, almost purple, bluish all over, dark as a bruise, and as blue a woman as I ever saw..