The Science journal article explains: 'As coal mining and the railroads brought progress to Kentucky, the blue Fugates started moving out of their communities and marrying other people. However, as the world opened up, the Fugates spread their reach further and the methemoglobinemia became less of a pronounced feature. Meanwhile, his grandmother, Luna Fugate, was described as being 'blue all over' with lips as 'dark as a bruise,' and one doctor described another Fugate as being 'bluer than hell.' One of the descendants of Martin and Elizabeth, a boy called Benjy Stacy, was reportedly born with purple skin. It was hard to get out, so they inter-married.' This inbreeding meant that methemoglobinemia remained a famous feature of the Fugate clan.Ĭommenting on the incestuous community Dennis Stacy, who was related to the Fugates himself, said: 'When they settled this country back then, there was no roads. Of the couple's seven children, four were reported to be blue.įrom there, the clan 'kept multiplying' and incest occurred as they were living 'in isolation from the world.' He was an orphan from France who emigrated to Kentucky in 1820 'to claim a land grand on the wilderness banks of Troublesome Creek,' according to a 1982 article in Science magazine.Īpparently, no mention of his unusual skin color was made in the early histories of the area, 'but family lore has it that Martin himself was blue.'īy chance he went on to find and marry a woman named Elizabeth Smith who carried the same recessive gene, but no one at the time knew this was the cause of methemoglobinemia. The story of the 'blue people of Kentucky' starts with a man named Martin. Their granddaughter also had it for just a few months. The Fugates' son also had methemoglobinemia at birth, but he grew out of it by the age of five. 'The nose, elbows, and knees are the most prominent in pigment.' While it is quite mild, his condition has in fact become more noticeable with aging. She explained: 'When it is very dark, the color of his skin is a blue purple. Hazel Fugate says that her husband 69-year-old Gary, who is a descendant of Martin's, suffers from methemoglobinemia and 'some days he's bluer than others.' Now a surviving Fugate has told that the ailment still persists in the family line to this day after interbreeding in the 19th century and early 20th century helped keep it alive. It's a condition that produces an abnormally high amount of methemoglobin - a form of hemoglobin - that can result in very dark, blue-colored blood that can be seen in the skin. The mysterious 'blue people of Kentucky' - who can be traced back to a man named Martin Fugate - left doctors baffled for decades until one blood specialist in the 1960s discovered they were suffering from methemoglobinemia. Have you ever found yourself feeling a bit blue? Well, for the descendants of one Kentucky family, that phrase has take on a very literal and devastating meaning.įor the past 200 years, the Fugate family has been battling an ultra-rare blood disorder that has caused generations of men and women to be tarnished with blue skin, a lingering reminder of the 'interbreeding' that took place between their ancestors.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |