Cawein was determined to find a cause and possibly a solution to help this small group of isolated Appalachian people. 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. Stacy recalls that his father-inlaw, Levy Fugate, was part of the family that showed blue. The disorder can cause heart abnormalities and seizures if the amount of methemoglobin in the blood exceeds 20 percent, but at levels between 10 and 20 percent it can cause blue skin without other symptoms. Cawein, Madison and E.J. 1 talking about this. Larry Gibson, environmental activist; founder of Keeper of the Mountains Foundation. Native Americans first began to gather in the Appalachian Mountains some 16,000 years ago. Which means lots of weekend warriors probably live here; its the families that have boats and who book nice family hunting trips. This article is an opinion based on facts and is meant as info-tainment. url('//www.incandina.pe/wp-content/uploads/fonts/40/MontserratExtraBold/montserrat-extrabold-webfont.woff') format('woff'), Blood cells always looked so beautiful to me, he says. Her face and her fingernails were almost indigo blue. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, the portion now known as West Virginia broke off to form its own state. Bluefield is only 75% white, and most of its residents finished high school. Dern it, Princeton. The number of tobacco stores per capita (we call it the chew factor) is the highest in West Virginia here in Charles Town. Martin and Elizabeth had seven children, four of whom were "bright blue" according to Fugate family lore. In 2019, the novel The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson, described a fictional version of the Fugate family during the Great Depression. In the isolated hollows of rural Kentucky, they were known as the blue Fugates and the blue Combses. And when you look at the data, its clear this is a really solid place for a redneck to make home. 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. Consignment Eyeglass Frames, 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. Its blue, and their people have always had blue skin because of all the intermarrying and incest. Note: In this instance the reason for cyanosis was not methemoglobinemia but Rh incompatibility. One of em I remember seeing him when I was just a boy Blue Anze, they called him. I'm going to assume that by blu. Blood cells always looked so beautiful to me, he says. Curiosity drove him to Hazard where he was introduced to a nurse, Ruth Pendergrass, who had met a "dark blue" woman. Bannon Has A Moment. So you know theres some good fishin there. Princeton is located down on I-77, before you make the climb into Virginia. When Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy was born in 1975, nurses and doctors were shocked and confused. He married a red-haired American named Elizabeth Smith with a very pale complexion. I can see that old blue running out of my skin, he confided. "Methomoglobin is an oxidized form of hemoglobin that has a decreased affinity for oxygen, resulting in a reduced ability to release oxygen to tissues." Wait. New Martinsville has the 2nd most places to buy guns, the 2nd most fishing/bait shops and several places to get chew. Cawein eventually found a small population of people in the back woods of Appalachia, many with a blue skin disorder. A new playing surface, FieldTurf Revolution 2.5, was installed in 2016, giving West Virginia one of the country's safest and most . West Virginia Get facts and photos about the 35th state. Theyre known simply as the blue people in the hills and hollows around Troublesome and Ball Creeks. A few occur in Garrett County, Maryland. Whoo-whee, New Martinsville! Cancel any time, no strings attached. Population: 5,191High school graduation rate: 70%Walmart rank: 4thDive bars and mobile home parks: 7th. One of the girls, the Informant, was discussing an upcoming trip to visit her brother at West Virginia University. Scott, E.M. Even though the first stanza references the Shenandoah River and Blue Ridge Mountainstwo geological features that only skim the very eastern panhandle of the state and are not closely related with the statethe beauty and pride expressed in the song made it an immediate hit in West Virginia. The first known ancestor was David Wilson, who was born in Scotland about 1650; he had a son David, born about . Population: 5,258Walmart rank: 1stChew factor: 1stAmmo per capita: 9th. This compares with the 20,000-25,000 human genes in 2.8 billion DNA base pairs. Trump's leading MAGA-loving insurrectionist Steve Bannon got himself so worked up this week he dropped an f-bomb. Google Maps. 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. Scott, E.M. The relation of diaphorase of human erythrocytes to inheritance of methemolglobinemia, Journal of Clinical Investigation, 39, 1960.3. Admitted in 1863, West Virginia was the . Most of them old people went by that name the blue Fugates. Chasing Chains, LLC. Activating it requires adding to the blood a substance that acts as an electron donor. The mystery behind the astonishing picture of the Fugates, which has been baffling people for years, appears to have finally been solved. Some say 99%. Population: 5,191High school graduation rate: 70%Walmart rank: 4thDive bars and mobile home parks: 7th. Typically, the blue is isolated to one part of the body. Called methaemoglobinaemia (commonly known as met-H), the condition reduces the It like to scared me to death! "For the first time in their lives, they were pink. Bluefield State University (Bluefield State) is a university in Bluefield, West Virginia that is an historically black university.It is a part of West Virginia's public education system and converted to a university in the summer of 2022. Scott also concluded that the condition was inherited as a simple recessive trait. You couldve done even better than that. 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. Google Maps. Elizabeth Smith, apparently, was as pale-skinned as the mountain laurel that blooms every spring around the creek hollows. 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. It seems as if this area is generally, more wealthy than the other cities on this list. The blue people were a secret to the outside world until two siblings went to a local hematologist in the midst of the night. Well, as you can imagine, I really examined them. Population: 5,258Walmart rank: 1stChew factor: 1stAmmo per capita: 9th. "That's crazy.". You have the most bars and trailer parks per capita in the state, and your high school graduation rate is 70%. In the Inuit communities, scientists had pinpointed the problem, a deficiency of an enzyme that converted methemoglobin to hemoglobin. A transfusion was being prepared when Benjys grandmother spoke up. As it was, the Fugates stayed in the same area well into the 20th century. Lives in the south or midwest (or West Virginia), Walmarts, Golden Corrals, Bass Pro Shops, and Dollar Generals nearby. They took the doctor to see their uncle, who was blue, too. They have the 2nd most bars and the 2nd most trailer/mobile home parks per capita in the state. remembered Pendergrass. 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 clinic doctors only saw her a few times in her life and never for anything serious. Within a few minutes. Normally diaphorase converts methemoglobin back to hemoglobin. It was real bad in her, Alva Stacy, the boys father, explained. $ 26,354. "The True Story of the Blue People of Kentucky" Population: 18,763Bars per capita: 6th in West VirginiaFishing/bait shops per capita: 4thMobile home parks per capita: 5th. It was caused, Scott speculated, by an absence of the enzyme diaphorase from their red blood cells. They were like any other 1800s family except theyliked inbreeding. We threw a lot of criteria at this one in order to get the best, most complete results possible. This results in brown blood giving Caucasian patients a bluish hue to their skin. Ask the Explainer. New Martinsville is located in the northwestern part of the state, right on the Ohio state line. Incredibly, Benjy had inherited a gene dating back over 162 years! "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. Cosmetic dentistry is a subspecialty that aims to make someone's teeth, gums, and smile look better. All them old fellers way back then was blue. In the isolated hollows of rural Kentucky, they were known as the blue Fugates and the blue Combses. Blue human aren't possible. Where people have deer horns on their hoods. Excise tax on bottled soft drinks, syrups and dry mixtures; disposition thereof. The only thing Stacy cant or wont remember is that his wife Luna was blue. Tests for abnormal hemoglobin were negative. Methemoglobinemia is a blood condition, not a skin condition. As a result of a coincidental meeting of recessive genes . Scotts Alaskans seemed to match Caweins blue people. The Fugate family of Kentucky has been known for their blue skin color for generations. At last they were free of their "blue" shade and were no longer embarrassed. @font-face { Blue People of West Virginia | . In normal people hemoglobin is converted to methemoglobin at a very slow rate. Eventually, the recessive gene began to disappear once coal mining and the railroad opened the community to outsiders. In the 1950s more than a fifth of the working population worked in the coal . Google Maps, KCR Barrel Saloon, Charles Town, WV. By the time theyd get to the top, the person would be gone. It is almost certain that Martin was a descendant of the Fugate family of Russell County, Virginia and probably of French origin. Rednecks are hailed as being great in our song lyrics. From a history of Perry County and some Fugate family Bibles listing ancestors, Cawein has constructed a fairly complete story. It would be hard to doubt this gracious man except that you cant find another person who knew Luna who doesnt remember her as being blue. 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. She gets upset at all the talk of inbreeding among the Fugates. Cherokee Indians were the main Native American group of the Southern Appalachian and Blue Ridge region, but there were also Iroquois, Powhatan, and Shawnee people.. 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. DynamicFrameworks - Elite ThemeForest Author. 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 . Bradley Cooper Parents, the blue color was gone from their skin," Cawein said. src: url('//www.incandina.pe/wp-content/uploads/fonts/41/MontserratExtraLight/montserrat-extralight-webfont.eot'); Madison Cawein began hearing rumors about the blue people when he went to work at the University of Kentuckys Lexington medical clinic in 1960. This province consists of northern and southern physiographic regions, which . This condition does, in fact, cause blue-tinted. If enough blood is "infected" with this faulty type of hemoglobin, it changes from red to an almost purple-ish dark blue. "If you took any random person in the population, maybe one in 100,000 would carry this gene, if that many," says Ricki Lewis, a science writer and author of the textbook "Human Genetics: Concepts and Applications," now in its 13th edition. 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. Population: 9,277High school graduation rate 73%Chew factor: 3Gun stores: 5th. What neither she nor Martin could have known is that they both carried the recessive gene for a rare hereditary blood disorder called methemoglobinemia. I just knew that patient was going to die right there in the health department, but she wasnt atall alarmed. What Happened to the Blue People? Most of the Fugates lived long and healthy lives. Trudging up and down the hollows, fending off the two mean dogs that everyone had in their front yard, the doctor and the nurse would spot someone at the top of a hill who looked blue and take off in wild pursuit. The doctors finally came to the conclusion that Benjys color was due to blood inherited from generations back.. Laughing, the Informant launched into a story of the "West Virginia Blue People", a story about a genetic condition the resulted from intermarriage. 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 On a hypothesis, he gave a substance called methylene blue to family members who were willing to take it. Then he began to construct the family genealogy and traced their roots back to Martin and Elizabeth Fugate. 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. Of their seven children, four were reported to be blue. So close! Neighboring Virginia has more than 200 per square mile. Different spellings of the surname sometimes include "Fugett" and "Fugitt". 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. Rednecks are hailed as being great in our song lyrics. Martin and Elizabeth had seven children, four being born blue; Zachariah, who was blue, married his mother's sister. 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.. West By God is right. Is there anything really wrong with being called a West Virginia redneck? Martin and Elizabeth had seven children, four being born blue; Zachariah, who was blue, married his mother's sister. Excise tax on bottled soft drinks, syrups and dry mixtures; disposition thereof. 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. Methemoglobinemia is one of the rare genetic conditions that's treatable with a simple pill. However, only 89% are white, and a whopping 83% finished high school. Dont freak out. 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. And by God, they didnt have the enzyme diaphorase. 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