Kentucky Blue People...The Fugate's.

 

 

Today we talk about The Fugate's. Not cryptids or paranormal but still a very interesting case...

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The Fugate's are a family from  the hills of Kentucky  known as the "Blue Fugates" or the Blue People of Kentucky, They are the  carriers of a rare  genetic trait  that led to the disease, methemoglobinemia this disease causes a  blue-tinged to the skin.

Methemoglobin is a nonfunctional blue version of the healthy red hemoglobin protein that carries oxygen. In most Caucasians, the red hemoglobin of the blood in their bodies shows through their skin giving it a pink tint.

For the Fugate family, the excessive amount of blue methemoglobin in their blood turned their skin color blue.

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===Blue People of Kentucky ===

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In  1820 Martin Fugate a french orphan became the first Fugate in the US.

He later settled in Troublesome Creek, in the hills of East Kentukey.

He eventually met Elizabeth Smith and was soon engaged..

Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith married and settled near Hazard, Kentuky  However they were both carriers of the recessive methemoglobinemia (met-H) gene, as was a nearby clan with whom the Fugates descendants intermarried. As a result, many descendants of the Fugates were born with
met-H.

Descendants with the gene continued to live in the areas around Troublesome Creek  and Ball Creek into the 20th century, eventually coming to the attention of the nurse Ruth Pendergrass and the hematologist Madison Cawein III, who made a detailed study of their condition and ancestry.
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===1960's  Oward...

 By the  1960s, some members of the Fugate family had begun to resent their blue  skin.

Not only did their skin mark them as different, but by that time, people had already begun to associate their skin color with the family’s history of inbreeding.

It was then that two Fugates approached Madison Cawein, a hematologist at the University of Kentucky’s medical clinic at the time, in search of a cure.

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“They were really embarrassed about being blue,” Cawein remembers. “Patrick was all hunched down in the hall. Rachel was leaning against the wall. They wouldn’t come into the waiting room. You could tell how much it bothered them to be blue.”

Using research collected from studies of isolated Alaskan Eskimo populations, Cawein was able to conclude that the Fugates carried a rare hereditary blood disorder that causes excessive levels of methemoglobin in their blood.


Cawein treated the family with methylene blue which seemed to decrees some of their symptoms and reduced the blue coloring of their skin.

 He eventually published his research in the Archives of Internal Medicine  in 1964.

As travel became easier in the 20th century, and families spread out over wider areas, the prevalence of the recessive gene in the local population reduced, and with it the probability of inheriting the disease.

 -----------Fugate Family Tree---------



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Benjamin Stacy, born in 1975, is the last known descendant of the Fugates to have been born with blue skin, and lost his blue skin tone as he grew older.

Having this recessive gen on both sides of the family combined with isolation and the fact that   many of the Fugates began to marry and have children within their own bloodline led to the bluse ting.

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“It was hard to get out, so they intermarried,” says Dennis Stacy, an amateur genealogist, and descendant of the Fugates. “I’m kin to myself.”

Benjy is descended from a line of this family that began when Martin’s son, Zachariah, married his mother’s sister.

  Today Benjy and most of the Fugate family descendants have lost their blue coloring and look like anyone eles you would see out n about...

                                                          Benjy at age 37
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It has been speculated that some other American sufferers of inherited methemoglobinemia may also have had Fugate ancestors, but searches for direct links have so far proved inconclusive.