Cawein was determined to find a cause and possibly a solution to help this small group of isolated Appalachian people. Blue human aren't possible. Elizabeth Smith, apparently, was as pale-skinned as the mountain laurel that blooms every spring around the creek hollows. 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. ( Returnto the corrected sentence.). Population: 10,486Mobile home parks in area: 3rd in WVBars per capita: 3rdGun stores per capita: 5th in West Virginia. Google Maps. The boy inherited his fathers lankiness and his mothers slightly nasal way of speaking. The enzyme eventually builds to normal levels in most children and to almost normal levels in those like Benjy, who carry one gene. There was a Zachariah Fugate who was married to a Mary Smith; both carried the gene which resulted in blue children. As a bonus, theres a Golden Corral, several Dollar Stores and many Waffle Houses in the area. Today I have a healthy son/nephew who is slightly green in skincolor. Dont freak out. They wouldnt come into the waiting room. As a result of a coincidental meeting of recessive genes, intermarriage and inbreeding, members of the Fugate family were born with a rare condition that made them visibly discoloured. Most of the Fugates didnt seem to mind being blue. Have you ever heard the song, Blue Moon of Kentucky? Its pretty well-known and popular. valley in the mountains in West Virginia with a barn and cows visible Stephanie Pittman 561 followers More information Blue People of West Virginia | . Scott also concluded that the condition was inherited as a simple recessive trait. Martin and Elizabeth set up housekeeping on the banks of Troublesome and began a family. Its post office is closed in 1935. From a history of Perry County and some Fugate family Bibles listing ancestors, Cawein has constructed a fairly complete story. Only adopted cousins are allowed to marry, while in Vermont, Virginia, and many other states, first cousins can tie the knot. 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. The afflicted were embarrassed about their condition and adamant about talking to Cawein. However, only 89% are white, and a whopping 83% finished high school. Cawein packed his black bag and rounded up Nurse Pendergrass for the big event. A nearby family who the early Fugates married into quite extensively also carried the gene. Martin Fugate arrived in the unsettled frontier of Kentucky in 1820. Her lips were as dark as a bruise. Give the gift of knowledge with our official 'did you know' book. Blue Grass Riding Club Of West Virginia, Inc. is a West Virginia Domestic Profit Corporation filed on January 19, 1965. A lot of nice farmland was lost to the lake over the . He was involved as a law enforcement officer in the Hatfield-McCoy Feud, the West Virginia Mine Wars and the destruction of moonshine stills. In another neighborhood of this rust-belt city of 46,000, Pam and Ted Keesee have their own. Days of testing provided no answers; but then Benjy's grandmother told the doctor a story about the "blue" Fugates. Got a question about todays news? Blah. He was a French orphan who knew nothing of his lineage. 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. The distinct gold-and-blue color scheme and Flying WV logo we've come to adore did not exist at that point. Cawein eventually found a small population of people in the back woods of Appalachia, many with a blue skin disorder. Tests for abnormal hemoglobin were negative. Population: 9,277High school graduation rate 73%Chew factor: 3Gun stores: 5th. The state capital is Charleston. As it was, the Fugates stayed in the same area well into the 20th century. Rattini is accused of distributing narcotic painkillers illegally to more than 200 pharmacies across West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Tennessee. He married a red-haired American named Elizabeth Smith with a very pale complexion. Martin married a red-headed American woman named Elizabeth Smith and the two set up a homestead on the banks of Troublesome Creek near Hazard County, Kentucky. yes, saw that years ago, colloidal silver, damn asshole medias, just state facts, you can prove., thanks for this honest reply. 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. Chasing Chains, LLC. Methemoglobinemia can also be caused by reactions to certain topical pain relievers like benzocaine and xylocaine. The couple had eight children, including Luna. Book is out of print, borrowed from Special Collections at the St. Louis County Library, St. Louis, MO. The company's principal address is Tuckers Run Rd . Hemoglobin gets its red color from a compound called heme that contains an iron atom. The gene would most likely appear in an inbred line. A mutated gene causes their bodies to build up a rare form of hemoglobin called methemoglobin that can't bond with oxygen. 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. 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. Inbreeding in eastern Kentucky has been turning offspring blue since the early 1880s. If enough blood is "infected" with this faulty type of hemoglobin, it changes from red to an almost purple-ish dark blue. Explainer thanks Edwin Arnold of Appalachian State University, Anthony Harkins of Western Kentucky University, and David Hsiung of Juniata College. Benjamin Stacy was the last of the Fugate family members to have blue skin and lived a healthy life. People wore jackets and hats that had the slogan "Northfork West Virginia Basketball Capital of the United States." Patrick and Rachel Ritchie, who lived in Hardburly, were also blue. One of them even married his own aunt, and most of them had a lot of children who also married their cousins. 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. But as Kentucky became more populated and more genes came into the Fugate family tree, there were far fewer children born blue. Whoo-whee, New Martinsville! Dunlaps Gun & Pawn, Hurricane, WV. 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. That iron atom binds with oxygen, which is how red blood cells circulate oxygen throughout the body. He tested first for abnormal hemoglobin, but the results were negative. When Benjy was born with purple skin, his relatives told the perplexed doctors about his great grandmother Luna Fugate. Im a hematologist, so something like that perks up my ears, Cawein says, sipping on whiskey sours and letting his mind slip back to the summer he spent tromping around the hills looking for blue people.. 15,898 100 A Cinephile's Guide to Biographical Films. Luna has been dead nearly 20 years now, but her widower survives. by F. William Sunderman, J.B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia PA, 1964. 5,600 views made by Rocco. Finding it ridiculous herself, the Informant told me that she still enjoys being a part of the joke. 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. This is redneck wonderland. They took the doctor to see their uncle, who was blue, too. 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. Lappat, Hereditary Methemoglobinemia in Hemoglobin, Its Precursors and Metabolites, ed. West Virginians became the prototypical hillbillies, and incest served as a crude scientific explanation for their downtrodden social condition. The blueness increases with increasing methemoglobin levels. Plus, we thought why not add in a few stereotypes? Learn how your comment data is processed. Due to all this inbreeding, there were a lot of blue people running around the backwoods of Kentucky. The story of an Appalachian malady, an inquisitive doctor, and a paradoxical cure. The Fugates are of French Huguenot descent, with the original immigrant ancestor coming over from France in about 1820. RoadSnacks is reader-supported. Cawein needed fresh blood to do an enzyme assay. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. The Blue Ridge was reached in 1670, and in 1671 another expedition encountered the first westward-flowing stream, the New River, in southwestern Virginia. Bluefield State is committed to being the region's leading institution of higher education. By Jamie Kiffel-Alcheh Fast Facts Nickname: The Mountain State Statehood: 1863; 35th state Population (as of July, 2016): 1,831,102. Fugates married other Fugates. He helped isolate an antidote for cholera, and he did some of the early work on L-dopa, the drug for Parkinsons disease. Eventually, the recessive gene began to disappear once coal mining and the railroad opened the community to outsiders. It seems as if this area is generally, more wealthy than the other cities on this list. 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. Cut off from contact with the wider population, they married cousins, aunts and other closely related kin, which greatly increased the odds of inheriting the condition. The Fugate family didnt leave the area for generations, continually intermarrying with relatives. 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. 5 years ago when I was on a swingerparty she got pregnant with me. The area was never. Set in West Virginia, it features cannibalistic mountain men, horribly disfigured from generations of incest. Google Maps. Definitely not a poaching bunch, these Hurricane rednecks. I couldnt tell you what caused it.. Within a few minutes. That total makes West Virginia the 38th most populous state in the country. 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. This condition does, in fact, cause blue-tinted. Regardless, this place might be the whitest, redneckest of them all. 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. 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. Informant: So, what my brother told me is that theres a story that there are people in the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, near the campus I guess, and there is skin is blue. The doctor gave each blue family a supply of methylene blue tablets to take as a daily pill. 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.". Habitat: Thick shrubbery and areas with tall trees. 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). Two YouTubers have shared an inside look into Odd as they documented themselves traveling down a windy two-lane road. Google Maps. Cawein is no stranger to eccentricities of the body. This led to the propagation of the genetic condition that gave them their distinctive blue skin color. "Within a few minutes. Come on, Grafton rednecks. I was actually born with my twin sisters fetus inside me. 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. We threw a lot of criteria at this one in order to get the best, most complete results possible. 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. In online research, there was no mention made of "blue" people as recorded in the genealogy book, The Fugate Family of Russell County Virginia, published in 1986, but it has been confirmed in the Fugate discussions on the Genforum. 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. The 2010 survey revealed that there were 1,852,994 people living in West Virginia, which represented a modest rise of just 2.5% on the numbers declared at the 2000 census. 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. The condition that made the Fugates blue causes large amounts of methemoglobin (which is a blue type of hemoglobin) to circulate in the blood. The entry was on the blue men, not of West Virginia, but of the Mountain State's neighbor, Kentucky, . 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. 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. 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. Ballengee testified in earlier civil depositions. 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 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. As travel became easier, more people moved into and out of the Fugates area of Kentucky, including some actual Fugates. "I started asking them questions: 'Do you have any relatives who are blue?' "But if you're marrying your cousin, it's one in eight. The Fugate family intermarried with a neighbouring family for generations, which led to a relatively pure gene pool, often including the met-H gene. There are other ways to get blue skin without inheriting it, though. Methemoglobin levels over 50% may result in seizures, coma, and death. Oxygen, or a lack of oxygen, is what turns the blood from red to blue in people with methemoglobinemia. 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. 1995-2022 Ancestral Findings, LLC. The entry was on the blue men, not of West Virginia, but of the Mountain State's neighbor, Kentucky, . 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. By the time theyd get to the top, the person would be gone. Benjy was a pretty big item in the hospital, his mother says with a grin. 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. Our skimmable newsletter is delivered to your inbox each week, giving you 5 things you need to read and get smarter. 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. 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.) The Faces of Appalachia. 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 recounted how, after hearing the story for the first time, he and his roommates would make a show of continuously checking to see if their other friends lips or skin ever looked blue. Legend has it that Martin himself may have had a blue tinge to his skin, but not the dark blue color of later Fugates. Lives in the south or midwest (or West Virginia), Walmarts, Golden Corrals, Bass Pro Shops, and Dollar Generals nearby. You have the most bars and trailer parks per capita in the state, and your high school graduation rate is 70%. If this conversion continued, all the bodys hemoglobin would eventually be rendered useless. The antidote worked quickly but patients were required to take daily doses as it passed quickly through the urine. valley in the mountains in West Virginia with a barn and cows visible West Virginia Mountains Fall Foliage The Mountain Spruce Fall Colors Beautiful Pictures Its 97% white, very blue collar, and there are lots of places to get guns, ammo and chew. Laughing, the Informant launched into a story of the "West Virginia Blue People", a story about a genetic condition the resulted from intermarriage. They are known for being carriers of a genetic trait that led to the blood disorder methemoglobinemia, causing the skin to appear blue. They lived in isolation and married the girl next door, even if they had the same last name, and consequently passed the gene on to many generations. Additional comment actions. There are even video games about rednecks. West Virginia's population has grown very slowly since the 1950s, at many times losing people . It is home to so much creativity, and has been a place of devastating poverty. 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. 1 talking about this. On a hypothesis, he gave a substance called methylene blue to family members who were willing to take it. Those who are otherwise healthy with levels under 15% may exhibit minor symptoms or none at all. get your facts straight for petes sake. A transfusion was being prepared when Benjys grandmother spoke up. 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. Blue skin. 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. It was later discovered ascorbic acid can do this, as well. Methemoglobinemia is a blood condition, not a skin condition. his wife happened to be a carrier for the gene, so in turn about half of their children were blue. These people arent related to the Fugates: Also fake. Theyre known simply as the blue people in the hills and hollows around Troublesome and Ball Creeks. Cawein, Madison and E.J. When you click through real estate links on our site, we earn an affiliate commission. They went over to Patrick and Rachel Ritchies house and injected each of them with 100 milligrams of methylene blue. He found references to methemoglobinemia dating to the turn of the century, but it wasnt until he came across E. M. Scotts 1960 report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (vol. 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 . 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? At 55%, people may feel extremely lethargic and go in and out of consciousness. Before Cawein ended his study of the blue people, he returned to the mountains to patch together the long and twisted journey of Martin Fugates recessive gene. The first known ancestor was David Wilson, who was born in Scotland about 1650; he had a son David, born about . The methylene blue he used on them is a dye a blue dye, ironically. Have you ever heard of the blue people of Kentucky? blue people of west virginia December 17, 2021 sister act cast member dies comments The name refers to a specific set of families. Apparently, it shows more easily when theyre cold!. Population: 18,763Bars per capita: 6th in West VirginiaFishing/bait shops per capita: 4thMobile home parks per capita: 5th. 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. They have the 2nd most bars and the 2nd most trailer/mobile home parks per capita in the state. The ZTF scans the entire Northern sky . It like to scared me to death! 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. The bluest Fugates I ever saw was Luna and her kin, says Carrie Lee Kilburn, a nurse who works at the rural medical center called Homeplace Clinic. 8 November 2021. Dern it, Princeton. Blow your mind. God Bless America. Two days of tests produced no explanation for skin the color of a bruised plum. Correction, June 9, 2008: The article originally stated that a handful of states allow marriages between first cousins. When West Virginia University decided to put "Black Lives Matter" decals on the back of their football helmets, the reaction by the people of . Her face and her fingernails were almost indigo blue. Feeder food: Grain and birdseed. The gene is still around today but has now become statistically insignificant and there are no serious medical problems associated with it. Where people wear camo to church. Howells Pawn and Guns, New Martinsville, WV. Where people have deer horns on their hoods. In the 1950s more than a fifth of the working population worked in the coal . 1:52. Lunas father, Levy Fugate, was one of Zachariah Fugates sons. Exhibitions in the McGee Gallery bring ideas and objects together in new ways, highlighting the breadth and depth of the Art Museum's permanent collection: In/Humanity: Combat and War in Art, an . Stacys son has built a modern house next door, but the old logger wont hear of leaving the cabin he built with timber he personally cut and hewed for Luna and their 13 children. It's a vote cast not just out of allegiance. It can make a claim that it should top this list, since it has the most people. Its nothing.. GreenPower Motor Co. to begin manufacturing at South Charleston, West Virginia facility 'this quarter' Hot and cold: Up and down weather calls for adaptation for West Virginia's ski destinations; Morgantown (West Virginia) business owner who pleaded guilty to Jan. 6 charges sued along with Trump; This Week in West Virginia History As coal mining and the railroads brought progress to Kentucky, the blue Fugates started moving out of their communities and marrying other people.
blue people of west virginia
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