by F. William Sunderman, J.B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia PA, 1964. Comet C/2022 E3 was first discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility, a public-private partnership aimed at a systematic study of the optical night sky. If youre curious enough, here are the least redneck places in West Virginia (if thats even possible): We aim to deliver infotainment about where you live that your real estate agent won't tell you. 2,999 100 . Their cheeks are solid white, their wings and backs are gray, and their underbodies are fluffy and light. She told me that her family was the blue Combses who lived up on Ball Creek. The doctors finally came to the conclusion that Benjys color was due to blood inherited from generations back.. Google Maps. When Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy was born in 1975, nurses and doctors were shocked and confused. Ballengee testified in earlier civil depositions. Elkins Journeez Bar, Elkins, WV. She was as blue a woman as I ever saw.. Generations later, a descendant of Martin Fugate, Benjy Stacy, would be born "blue". Cawein would have no part of it, and he related with glee the news that a film crew sent to Kentucky from Hollywood fled the two mean dogs in every front yard without any film. Some sources claim their are no blue . Add to calendar. But by 3 years old and . If this conversion continued, all the bodys hemoglobin would eventually be rendered useless. The couple had eight children, including Luna. 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. For the first time in their lives, they were pink. It is the color of oxygen-depleted blood seen in the blue veins just below the skin. 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. Buckhannon is a town thats 95% white, where 3 out of 10 people didnt graduate from high school. Population: 18,763Bars per capita: 6th in West VirginiaFishing/bait shops per capita: 4thMobile home parks per capita: 5th. They went over to Patrick and Rachel Ritchies house and injected each of them with 100 milligrams of methylene blue. He was born in the 1970s in a maternity ward of Hazard, Kentucky. Her face and her fingernails were almost indigo blue. The blue skin gene is a recessive gene that only appears when both parents are carriers of the gene. "That's crazy.". The following piece was collected at a dinner table with a group of girls out celebrating a friends birthday. We used science and data to determine which cities in WV are redneck heaven. Apparently, it shows more easily when theyre cold!. His two room log cabin sits in the middle of Laurel Fork Hollow. 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. 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. There are even video games about rednecks. Its a part of our culture. 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 Stumped, the doctor turned to the medical literature for a clue. Tests for abnormal hemoglobin were negative. The Registered Agent on file for this company is Mikeooney. Diet: Insects, seeds, and grains. Wheeling's city flag checks all the boxes for an [] Feeder food: Grain and birdseed. One relative describes her as blue all over, and another calls Luna the bluest woman I ever saw.. 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. Rattini is accused of distributing narcotic painkillers illegally to more than 200 pharmacies across West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Tennessee. ( Returnto the corrected sentence.). Finding it ridiculous herself, the Informant told me that she still enjoys being a part of the joke. Oh, and they had blue skin. The Faces of Appalachia. West Virginians became the prototypical hillbillies, and incest served as a crude scientific explanation for their downtrodden social condition. Faris, David. Meghan. Eventually, Cawein gained their trust and began taking blood samples. Martin and Elizabeth set up housekeeping on the banks of Troublesome and began a family. 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. Cawein drew lots of blood from the Ritchies and hurried back to his lab. Its true that, through the 19th century, transportation networks developed slowly in the rugged, westernmost portion of Virginia (incorporated as West Virginia in 1863). Population: 9,277High school graduation rate 73%Chew factor: 3Gun stores: 5th. We do not feel less-fortunate. Additional comment actions. Inbreeding in eastern Kentucky has been turning offspring blue since the early 1880s. "She had been out in the cold and she was just blue!" recalls Pendergrass, who is now 69 and retired from nursing. Population: 5,626High school graduation rate: 72%Gun stores per capita: 5th in WVFishing/bait per capita: 3rd in the state. Called methaemoglobinaemia (commonly known as met-H), the condition reduces the individuals ability to carry oxygen in their blood. If the blue people did have methemoglobinemia, the next step was to find out the cause. 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. 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.. 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. It was hard to get out, so they intermarried, says Dennis Stacy, a 51-year-old coal miner and amateur genealogist who has filled a loose-leaf notebook with the laboriously traced blood lines of several local families. Legend has it that Martin himself may have had a blue tinge to his skin, but not the dark blue color of later Fugates. 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. Madison Cawein began hearing rumors about the blue people when he went to work at the University of Kentuckys Lexington medical clinic in 1960. Martin Fugate, who was orphaned as a child in France, began the American Fugate clan. A mutated gene causes their bodies to build up a rare form of hemoglobin called methemoglobin that can't bond with oxygen. (Baltimore: Gateway Press 1986). The Appalachian region of the US is a beautiful place with a rich and sometimes tragic history. Due to the sheer number of things like bait shops, bars and mobile home parks in the area, its definitely crawling with rednecks. As it was, the Fugates stayed in the same area well into the 20th century. 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. Written family records do not indicate Martin's skin color, but family legend says he was blue. Laughing, the Informant launched into a story of the West Virginia Blue People, a story about a genetic condition the resulted from intermarriage. Rachel was leaning against the wall. 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. 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. The only real picture is of a man who turned himself blue by eating silver. In another neighborhood of this rust-belt city of 46,000, Pam and Ted Keesee have their own. 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. The area was never entirely cut off, but many people lived in remote closed communities with little incoming or outgoing migration. West Virginia: County: Tyler: Elevation. Since there werent any roads or trains near their small community, the kidswere married off to the only people who lived nearby: their cousins. He was involved as a law enforcement officer in the Hatfield-McCoy Feud, the West Virginia Mine Wars and the destruction of moonshine stills. It is almost certain that Martin was a descendant of the Fugate family of Russell County, Virginia and probably of French origin. Methemoglobinemia is a blood condition, not a skin condition. The ZTF scans the entire Northern sky . Several familes moved elsewhere after being bought out. Cawein and his colleagues published their research on hereditary diaphorase deficiency in the Archives of Internal Medicine (April, 1964) in 1964. Cawein eventually found a small population of people in the back woods of Appalachia, many with a blue skin disorder. Heres their story. 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). And a Walmart all to their own. From a history of Perry County and some Fugate family Bibles listing ancestors, Cawein has constructed a fairly complete story. And shop at Walmart. Lappat, Hereditary Methemoglobinemia in Hemoglobin, Its Precursors and Metabolites, ed. All them old fellers way back then was blue. Explainer thanks Edwin Arnold of Appalachian State University, Anthony Harkins of Western Kentucky University, and David Hsiung of Juniata College. In fact, the last known blue Fugate was born in 1975, and his skin color faded to normal as he grew up. This results in brown blood giving Caucasian patients a bluish hue to their skin. One came from a blue Flugate whod joined the Army and been sent to Panama, where his son was born bright blue. This genetic defect comes from a rare recessive gene, so most people arent affected by it unless they happen to reproduce with another person who carries it. In the early 1960's, this blue malady caught the attention of Madison Cawein, an inquisitive hematologist from the University of Kentucky. Zach took the doctor even farther up Copperhead Hollow to see his Aunt Bessie Fugate, who was blue. We use data, analytics, and a sense of humor to determine the dirt on places across the country. One of the girls, the Informant, was discussing an upcoming trip to visit her brother at West Virginia University. Levels at or above 70% are considered life-threatening and are accompanied by erratic heartbeats and circulatory problems. Martin and Elizabeth had seven children, four being born blue; Zachariah, who was blue, married his mother's sister. She and her husband Alva have a strong sense of family. it is a blood disorder in which their blood does not oxygenate correctly. 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 Benjy's birth that they would crowd around the baby and try to make him cry. This information supplied by John Graves whose uncle was the father of the child. Luna is buried at the top of the hollow. This is redneck wonderland. By Jamie Kiffel-Alcheh Fast Facts Nickname: The Mountain State Statehood: 1863; 35th state Population (as of July, 2016): 1,831,102. If their blood had a lower concentration of methemoglobin, they might only blush blue in cold weather, while people with higher concentrations of methemoglobin were bright blue from head to toe. On a hypothesis, he gave a substance called methylene blue to family members who were willing to take it. The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. Researchers believe this to truly be the case, a result of the family suffering from a genetic condition called methemoglobinemia, which is an excess of methemoglobin in the red blood cells of the body. Its 97% white, very blue collar, and there are lots of places to get guns, ammo and chew. Start your free trial today to learn more about your ancestors using our powerful and intuitive search. "But if you're marrying your cousin, it's one in eight. 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. With Fugate blood on both his mothers and his fathers side, the boy could have received genes for the enzyme deficiency from either direction. One could inherit the gene, not get the blood disorder, but pass the gene on to a child. Cawein would drive back and forth between Lexington and Hazard an eight-hour ordeal before the tollway was built and scour the hills looking for the blue people hed heard rumors about. Such people tend to be very blue only at birth, probably because newborns normally have smaller amounts of diaphorase. Today I have a healthy son/nephew who is slightly green in skincolor. Of their seven children, four were reported to be blue. Plus, we thought why not add in a few stereotypes? Benjy was a pretty big item in the hospital, his mother says with a grin. 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. Dr. Cawein injected the dye into the volunteers, and they were amazed to see how quickly their skin changed from blue to a healthy pink, then gradually to a Caucasian white. So, youd think people who are rednecks would be proud to be called a redneck. The Blue Fugates have essentially now gone from reality to legend. 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. References 2017-2018 Blue Book Frontice (p. I-VIII) Section 1: Executive (p. 1-330) Section 2: Legislative (p. 331-508) 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. 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. It is documented that Fugates were born in the colonies in the mid 1600's but the original progenitor has not been confirmed. 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. His car gave out on the dirt road to Zachs house, and the doctor had to borrow a Jeep from a filling station. Stacy counts Fugate blood in his own veins. These people arent related to the Fugates: Also fake. My grandmother Luna on my dads side was a blue Fugate. The Fugate family intermarried with a neighbouring family for generations, which led to a relatively pure gene pool, often including the met-H gene. Most lived to their 80s and 90s without serious illness associated with the skin discoloration. Matt Harvey The Derby Bar & Grill, Fairmount, WV. Martin and Elizabeth had seven children, four of whom were "bright blue" according to Fugate family lore. 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. It wasn't always this way. They were really embarrassed about being blue, he said. The Informant learned this information from her brother, when he returned home after his first semester at school. 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. Its common. Because of the dispersion of fluids, the solution only lasts for about a day so the carrier would have to drink a serving every day. then I sat down and we began to chart the family." The American Heart Association had a clinic in Hazard, and it was there that Cawein met a great big nurse who offered to help. 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. As scientists discovered in the 1960s, the mutation that causes the Smurf-like skin is carried by a recessive gene, and it takes two people with that same gene to produce a blue child. Having blue children did not concern them. 15,898 100 A Cinephile's Guide to Biographical Films. But Cawein knew from earlier studies that the body has an alternative method of converting methemoglobin back to normal. By 1850, approximately half of Kanawha County's slaves worked in the salt industrymany mined coal to fuel the furnaces. It was painful. Princeton is located down on I-77, before you make the climb into Virginia. The Fugate family intermarried with a neighbouring family for generations, which led to a relatively pure gene pool, often including the met-H gene. 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 Fugates are of French Huguenot descent, with the original immigrant ancestor coming over from France in about 1820. When you click through real estate links on our site, we earn an affiliate commission. The state capital is Charleston. Cawein packed his black bag and rounded up Nurse Pendergrass for the big event. Martin and Elizabeth Fugates blue children multiplied in this natural isolation tank. It was later discovered ascorbic acid can do this, as well. The condition is called methemoglobinemia, which is a disorder that reduces the amount of oxygen in the blood and body tissues, therefore making the skin appear blue. He had to drive eight hours back to Hazard to search out the Ritchies, who lived in a tapped-out mining town called Hardburly. 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. Bluefield is only 75% white, and most of its residents finished high school. 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. It seems as if this area is generally, more wealthy than the other cities on this list. Normally diaphorase converts methemoglobin back to hemoglobin. The clinic doctors only saw her a few times in her life and never for anything serious. They were poor people, concurs Nurse Pendergrass, but they were good.References1. The blood disorder is inherited as a simple recessive trait - meaning that to get the disorder, a person would have to inherit two genes, one from each parent. More than a cent. And by God, they didnt have the enzyme diaphorase. Laurel Wheeler and family, Buena Vista, Rockbridge County, Virginia. I looked at other enzymes and nothing was wrong with them. Google Maps, KCR Barrel Saloon, Charles Town, WV. This then turns the carriers blood into a normal red hue which is then reflected in a change in skin tone. Theyre prominently featured in reality television. As coal mining and the railroads brought progress to Kentucky, the blue Fugates started moving out of their communities and marrying other people. Where is this area located in eastern KY? Settling in the remote hills of Kentucky, there werent a lot of other people nearby, and marrying people who were closely related became common among the Fugates. At 30%, nausea, difficulty breathing, and an elevated heart rate start to appear. Whoo-whee, New Martinsville! When Benjy was born with purple skin, his relatives told the perplexed doctors about his great grandmother Luna Fugate. 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. 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. Inbreeding in eastern Kentucky has been turning offspring blue since the early 1880s. 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. The inbreeding caused the recessive gene to appear in both parents. It was caused, Scott speculated, by an absence of the enzyme diaphorase from their red blood cells. They were bluern hell, Cawein says. The Northfork High School "Blue Demons" were a force to be reckoned with from 1971 to 1984, setting national records including most consecutive state championships. Martin and Elizabeth had seven children, four of whom were blue; the recessive gene meant there was a 25 percent chance of each pregnancy resulting in a blue child. Have you ever heard the song, Blue Moon of Kentucky? Its pretty well-known and popular. Published November 21, 2021 Updated November 29, 2021 For nearly 200 years, the Fugates known as the blue people of Kentucky remained largely sealed off from the outside world as they passed their blue skin from generation to generation. Days of testing provided no answers; but then Benjy's grandmother told the doctor a story about the "blue" Fugates. there is no "blue-soloution" that turns them back to a "normal" color. Which means lots of weekend warriors probably live here; its the families that have boats and who book nice family hunting trips. For the Fugates, family members expressed the gene to varying degrees. THE town of Odd, West Virginia is a quiet, rural countryside, despite all the buzz surrounding the infamous inbred family, The Whittakers, who live within it. Yep, thats right. Cawein is no stranger to eccentricities of the body. One look at Luke was enough to get those doctors down here in a hurry, says Pendergrass, who joined Cawein to look for more blue people. Dunlaps Gun & Pawn, Hurricane, WV. What neither she nor Martin could have known is that they both carried the recessive gene for a rare hereditary blood disorder called methemoglobinemia. It can be brought on by several things: abnormal hemoglobin formation, an enzyme deficiency, and taking too much of certain drugs, including vitamin K, which is essential for blood clotting and is abundant in pork liver and vegetable oil. 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.". Houses belonging to people that lived in the valley were mostly torn down. Theres a debate as to what percentage of Hurricane is white. The methylene blue he used on them is a dye a blue dye, ironically. New Martinsville has the 2nd most places to buy guns, the 2nd most fishing/bait shops and several places to get chew. Methemoglobinemia can also be caused by reactions to certain topical pain relievers like benzocaine and xylocaine. Its post office is closed in 1935. He came from where the sun don't shine. astounding ignorance toward his own countrymen, [are neither] unique [n]or particularly common to the region. Stereotypes about West Virginian breeding practices have long been linked to the states poverty. History Timeline of the Native Indians of West Virginia. Bessie had an iron pot of clothes boiling in her front yard, but she graciously allowed the doctor to draw some of her blood. 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. So close! Elizabeth Smith, apparently, was as pale-skinned as the mountain laurel that blooms every spring around the creek hollows. Its nothing.. (Martian Survivors). Aside from the stark discoloration of the carriers skin, there are no serious problems associated with the disease. The mountain range is located in the eastern United States, and extends 550 miles southwest from southern Pennsylvania through Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. Then he began to construct the family genealogy and traced their roots back to Martin and Elizabeth Fugate. Luna Stacy possessed the good health common to the blue people, bearing at least 13 children before she died at 84. martin fugate was blue from birth, which has nothing to do with inbreeding. Theres lots of trucks in Grafton, WV. 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. 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. 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? 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. Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article: Dave Roos One of em I remember seeing him when I was just a boy Blue Anze, they called him. The area was never. The West Virginia motto is Montani semper liberi, and the state is one of the most mountainous in the country; sometimes it is called the "little Switzerland" of America, and once I heard an irreverent local citizen call it the "Afghanistan of the United States."The precipitous upland nature of the terrain makes naturally for three things: (1) poor communications; (2) fierce sectionalism; (3 . The doctor gave each blue family a supply of methylene blue tablets to take as a daily pill. 8 November 2021. Luna was bluish all over. Two days of tests produced no explanation for skin the color of a bruised plum. H & S Sporting Goods, Princeton, WV. A transfusion was being prepared when Benjys grandmother spoke up. He married a red-haired American named Elizabeth Smith with a very pale complexion. Scott, E.M. The relation of diaphorase of human erythrocytes to inheritance of methemolglobinemia, Journal of Clinical Investigation, 39, 1960.3. It has nothing to do with melanin, the amino acid that gives people darker skin tones. Google Maps. Bluefield State is committed to being the region's leading institution of higher education. Well, as you can imagine, I really examined them. how to close a call option on td ameritrade,