The blueness increases with increasing methemoglobin levels. Luna is buried at the top of the hollow. They were poor people, concurs Nurse Pendergrass, but they were good.References1. Everyone around here knows about the blue Fugates, says Hilda Stacy who, at 26, looks more like a sister than a mother to her children. But as Kentucky became more populated and more genes came into the Fugate family tree, there were far fewer children born blue. The blue skin gene is a recessive gene that only appears when both parents are carriers of the gene. Stacy courted her, married her, and moved over from Troublesome Creek to make a living in timber on her daddys land. Scott, E.M. The relation of diaphorase of human erythrocytes to inheritance of methemolglobinemia, Journal of Clinical Investigation, 39, 1960.3. This publication also contains information on state and federal agencies; postal information; the Constitutions of the United States and West Virginia; and, considerable information on counties, municipalities and various organizations. When they settled this country back then, there was no roads. he passed the gene on to his children. 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. 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%. When Benjy was born with purple skin, his relatives told the perplexed doctors about his great grandmother Luna Fugate. A nearby family who the early Fugates married into quite extensively also carried the gene. 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. The gold of the helmet did not reflect the gold utilized in our colors today. Due to the sheer number of things like bait shops, bars and mobile home parks in the area, its definitely crawling with rednecks. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. The 76-year-old diva used the less than divine choice of words for the Mountain State in a Twitter against Sen. Joe Manchin torpedoing President Biden's multitrillion-dollar spending plans. The odds against it were incalculable, but Martin Fugate managed to find and marry a woman who carried the same recessive gene. The condition that made the Fugates blue causes large amounts of methemoglobin (which is a blue type of hemoglobin) to circulate in the blood. 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. Plus, we thought why not add in a few stereotypes? 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.) Her face and her fingernails were almost indigo blue. Eventually, the recessive gene began to disappear once coal mining and the railroad opened the community to outsiders. In response, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia railed against the veep, accusing him of astounding ignorance toward his own countrymen. Howd West Virginia get a reputation for inbreeding? One could inherit the gene, not get the blood disorder, but pass the gene on to a child. Rednecks love to shoot their guns and fish, and there are a really high number of ammo stores and bait shops in the area, per person. That total makes West Virginia the 38th most populous state in the country. Martin Fugate was a French orphan who emigrated to Kentucky in 1820 to claim a land grant on the wilderness banks of Troublesome Creek. Benjy Stacy is one of the last of the blue Fugates. Inbreeding in eastern Kentucky has been turning offspring blue since the early 1880s. ELVIS SEEN AT GRACELAND ON HIS 85th BIRTHDAY! The search for blue people ensued. Book is out of print, borrowed from Special Collections at the St. Louis County Library, St. Louis, MO. The Informant learned this information from her brother, when he returned home after his first semester at school. After ruling out heart and lung diseases, the doctor suspected methemoglobinemia, a rare hereditary blood disorder that results from excess levels of methemoglobin in the blood. Ballengee testified in earlier civil depositions. Eventually, Cawein gained their trust and began taking blood samples. The methylene blue he used on them is a dye a blue dye, ironically. Mary (Dawley) Fugate, who answers quite a few queries and also helped compile the genealogy book, indicates that the siblings of Martin Fugate were not blue but he must have been a carrier. 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. Where people wear camo to church. Cawein eventually found a small population of people in the back woods of Appalachia, many with a blue skin disorder. Little did they know that their union would create shades of blue people! Got a question about todays news? As a result of a coincidental meeting of recessive genes . You may now brag to your friends and share this endlessly on your Facebook walls. While the substance isnt harmful, large amounts of it will tint any tissue that has blood flowing to it a blue color. 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 Fugate familys condition caused the blue members to be missing that enzyme; because their methemoglobin couldnt be converted, large amounts of it built up in the blue Fugates, even before birth, causing a very obvious blue tone to their skin. Lives in the south or midwest (or West Virginia), Walmarts, Golden Corrals, Bass Pro Shops, and Dollar Generals nearby. 2017-2018 Blue Book Frontice (p. I-VIII) Section 1: Executive (p. 1-330) Section 2: Legislative (p. 331-508) Several familes moved elsewhere after being bought out. We see fit that they will grow up to be strong holler girls or boys. In another neighborhood of this rust-belt city of 46,000, Pam and Ted Keesee have their own. There are still blue people around today, but some of them developed their blueness from ingesting colloidal silver. While the substance isn't harmful, large amounts of it will tint any tissue that has blood flowing to it a blue color. What Happened to the Blue People? It was real bad in her, Alva Stacy, the boys father, explained. Cawein was determined to find a cause and possibly a solution to help this small group of isolated Appalachian people. Feb. 22, 2012 -- Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy so frightened maternity doctors with the color of his skin -- "as Blue as Lake Louise" -- that he was rushed just hours after his birth in 1975 to . Folklore maintained the Fugates were blue due to heart disease or lung problems. She had been out in the cold and she was just blue! recalls Pendergrass, who is now 69 and retired from nursing. The inbreeding caused the recessive gene to appear in both parents. A fellow by the name of John E. Stacy spotted Luna at Sunday services of the Old Regular Baptist Church back before the century turned. 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). Bessie had an iron pot of clothes boiling in her front yard, but she graciously allowed the doctor to draw some of her blood. He remembered that the Ritchie siblings "were really embarrassed about being blue." Howells Pawn and Guns, New Martinsville, WV. Exaggeration-prone outsiders. Diet: Insects, seeds, and grains. Patrick and Rachel Ritchie, who lived in Hardburly, were also blue. 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 . "There is a clan of partly-colored people in Barbour County often called Guineas, under the erroneous presumption that they are Guinea negroes," observed WV historian Hu Maxwell in the 1890s. When you click through real estate links on our site, we earn an affiliate commission. 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, 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. Elkins is way out in the middle of nowhere south of Morgantown, at the base of the Appalachians. It was really something exciting to see.. 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. Excise tax on bottled soft drinks, syrups and dry mixtures; disposition thereof. 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. The only thing Stacy cant or wont remember is that his wife Luna was blue. Then he began to construct the family genealogy and traced their roots back to Martin and Elizabeth Fugate. Soon, the Fugates became known as the Blue Fugates of Kentucky. Fortunately, Cawein was able to find an antidote for the blood disorder - methylene blue which acted as an electron donor. "For the first time in their lives, they were pink. It reduced the brightness of the blue on their skin. Rattini is accused of distributing narcotic painkillers illegally to more than 200 pharmacies across West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Tennessee. It like to scared me to death! Scott's research had found hereditary methemoglobinemia among Alaskan Eskimos and Indians caused by an absence of the enzyme diaphorase from their red blood cells. Blue Hole, West Virginia GPS Coordinates to Blue hole 39.594754,-79.748120 The drugs effects are temporary, as methylene blue is normally excreted in the urine. So, hold our beers and watch this. 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). It was later discovered ascorbic acid can do this, as well. The state capital is Charleston. He tested first for abnormal hemoglobin, but the results were negative. In fact, the last known blue Fugate was born in 1975, and his skin color faded to normal as he grew up. She has lived in the primitive dwelling without running water or electricity on the slopes of Dead Fall Mountain her entire life. She was as blue a woman as I ever saw.. Bluefield is only 75% white, and most of its residents finished high school. It has nothing to do with melanin, the amino acid that gives people darker skin tones. No mention of his skin color is made in the early histories of the area, but family lore has it that Martin himself was blue. You have the most bars and trailer parks per capita in the state, and your high school graduation rate is 70%. That iron atom binds with oxygen, which is how red blood cells circulate oxygen throughout the body. 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. As a bonus, theres a Golden Corral, several Dollar Stores and many Waffle Houses in the area. 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. Fear that more inflation will cost jobs. '"He was almost purple,"' his father, Alva Stacy, recalls." 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. She lives alone in one of the. Cawein, Madison, et. Its a part of our culture. 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.". He married a red-haired American named Elizabeth Smith with a very pale complexion. West Virginia Get facts and photos about the 35th state. 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. All them old fellers way back then was blue. With Fugate blood on both his mothers and his fathers side, the boy could have received genes for the enzyme deficiency from either direction. The Wilson Family of West Virginia. The company's principal address is Tuckers Run Rd . Levy married a Ritchie girl and bought 200 acres of rolling land along Ball Creek. Inbreeding in eastern Kentucky has been turning offspring blue since the early 1880s. Instead, football players bore a bronzesque gold helmet emblazoned with a blue outline of the state of West Virginia and the letters "WVU" inside an oval. Its post office is closed in 1935. However, the disorder didn't seem to cause any special health problems. Have you ever heard of the blue people of Kentucky? Their inbreeding led to several medical problems and recessive genes being passed down through each child, such as one that gave some of the offspring blue skin. 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.. avg. Patrick was all hunched down in the hall. Edit Old Gold & Blue Page He hasnt studied the condition for years. Note: In this instance the reason for cyanosis was not methemoglobinemia but Rh incompatibility. Answer (1 of 3): Depends on what you mean by blue. 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. Incredibly, Benjy had inherited a gene dating back over 162 years! 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