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. Thankfully, Benjy lost his blue shade after a few weeks and the only lingering effects were blue fingernails and lips when he was cold or angry. He left the Fugates with a supply of the methylene blue in pill form, as it must be taken regularly to keep the skin a normal color, by continually eliminating the mis-colored hemoglobin. 2017-2018 Blue Book Frontice (p. I-VIII) Section 1: Executive (p. 1-330) Section 2: Legislative (p. 331-508) Within a few minutes. West Virginia, constituent state of the United States of America. Princeton is located down on I-77, before you make the climb into Virginia. It has nothing to do with melanin, the amino acid that gives people darker skin tones. (Baltimore: Gateway Press 1986). Written family records do not indicate Martin's skin color, but family legend says he was blue. The Fugate family intermarried with a neighbouring family for generations, which led to a relatively pure gene pool, often including the met-H gene. By the time a young hematologist from the University of Kentucky came down to Troublesome Creek in the 1960s to cure the blue people, Martin Fugates descendants had multiplied their recessive genes all over the Cumberland Plateau. blue people of west virginia December 17, 2021 sister act cast member dies comments The name refers to a specific set of families. Some of the blue people thought the doctor was slightly addled for suggesting that a blue dye could turn them pink. We see fit that they will grow up to be strong holler girls or boys. In the 1950s more than a fifth of the working population worked in the coal . 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. And unleash your spirit. 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. Luna was bluish all over. 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. Cawein and his colleagues published their research on hereditary diaphorase deficiency in the Archives of Internal Medicine (April, 1964) in 1964. What is a redneck anyways? He hasnt studied the condition for years. Note: In this instance the reason for cyanosis was not methemoglobinemia but Rh incompatibility. He was a French orphan who knew nothing of his lineage. 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? 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. But his first love, which he developed as an Army medical technician in World War II, was hematology. Patrick was all hunched down in the hall. In normal people hemoglobin is converted to methemoglobin at a very slow rate. Cawein packed his black bag and rounded up Nurse Pendergrass for the big event. Population: 9,277High school graduation rate 73%Chew factor: 3Gun stores: 5th. In 2019, the percentage of foreign-born citizens in West Virginia was 1.66%, meaning that the rate has been decreasing. The notion of widespread inbreeding was at least in part the result of crude assumptions about how these isolated forest people might have been perpetuating their communities. 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. She had been out in the cold and she was just blue! recalls Pendergrass, who is now 69 and retired from nursing. After ruling out heart and lung diseases, the doctor suspected methemoglobinemia, a rare hereditary blood disorder that results from excess levels of methemoglobin in the blood. 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. it is a blood disorder in which their blood does not oxygenate correctly. As it was, the Fugates stayed in the same area well into the 20th century. 2022 Science Classroom Teacher Resources. Population: 10,486Mobile home parks in area: 3rd in WVBars per capita: 3rdGun stores per capita: 5th in West Virginia. Scotts Alaskans seemed to match Caweins blue people. What Happened to the Blue People? When West Virginia University decided to put "Black Lives Matter" decals on the back of their football helmets, the reaction by the people of . Additional comment actions. Edit Old Gold & Blue Page They were like any other 1800s family except theyliked inbreeding. Of their seven children, four were reported to be blue. he passed the gene on to his children. You know theres lots of rednecks here when you look at the numbers. That total makes West Virginia the 38th most populous state in the country. The boy inherited his fathers lankiness and his mothers slightly nasal way of speaking. From a history of Perry County and some Fugate family Bibles listing ancestors, Cawein has constructed a fairly complete story. Born Jan. 16, 1869, in Marion County, Ephraim Franklin Morgan went on to become one of West Virginia's governors. The family was first discovered in 1958 when one of the blue men, Luke Combs, who was a descendant of another branch of the Fugate family, took his white wife to the University of Kentucky Hospital and doctors paid more attention to him than his wife. You couldve done even better than that. When they settled this country back then, there was no roads. Chasing Chains, LLC. It reduced the brightness of the blue on their skin. Published. As travel became easier, more people moved into and out of the Fugates area of Kentucky, including some actual Fugates. Cawein got lucky when a brother and sister named Patrick and Rachel Ritchie walked into a Hazard County clinic. Hereditary diaphorase deficiency and methemoglobinemia. West Virginia's population has grown very slowly since the 1950s, at many times losing people . You may now brag to your friends and share this endlessly on your Facebook walls. Little did they know that their union would create shades of blue people! The drugs effects are temporary, as methylene blue is normally excreted in the urine. Upon further research, I saw that the original story was based on a specific family that was said to be suffering from blue-tinted skin. "They were bluer'n hell," said Cawein in a 1982 interview with Science 82. The blue skin gene is a recessive gene that only appears when both parents are carriers of the gene. 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. By the time theyd get to the top, the person would be gone. From California herself, the informant was very curious to hear about what the people of West Virginia were like. Where people have deer horns on their hoods. Laurel Wheeler and family, Buena Vista, Rockbridge County, Virginia. The area was never. Which means lots of weekend warriors probably live here; its the families that have boats and who book nice family hunting trips. Elizabeth Smith, apparently, was as pale-skinned as the mountain laurel that blooms every spring around the creek hollows. She has lived in the primitive dwelling without running water or electricity on the slopes of Dead Fall Mountain her entire life. Blah. Yep, thats right. The entry was on the blue men, not of West Virginia, but of the Mountain State's neighbor, Kentucky, . This small enclave was no longer isolated and they began to disperse and marry outside of their little clan diminishing the effect of the "blue" gene. Inbreeding in eastern Kentucky has been turning offspring blue since the early 1880s. Rattini is accused of distributing narcotic painkillers illegally to more than 200 pharmacies across West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Tennessee. When Benjy was born with purple skin, his relatives told the perplexed doctors about his great grandmother Luna Fugate. 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. A mutated gene causes their bodies to build up a rare form of hemoglobin called methemoglobin that can't bond with oxygen. then I sat down and we began to chart the family." So you know theres some good fishin there. "There is a clan of partly-colored people in Barbour County often called Guineas, under the erroneous presumption that they are Guinea negroes," observed WV historian Hu Maxwell in the 1890s. Little Blue Run in Chester West Virginia is gone 8/8/2004: The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes about Little Blue Run: Dangerous disposal, by Alyson Walls . It was caused, Scott speculated, by an absence of the enzyme diaphorase from their red blood cells. Normally diaphorase converts methemoglobin back to hemoglobin. A lot of nice farmland was lost to the lake over the . It is bordered by Pennsylvania to the north, Maryland and Virginia to the east, Kentucky to the southwest, and Ohio to the northwest. 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. It is almost certain that Martin was a descendant of the Fugate family of Russell County, Virginia and probably of French origin. He injected the Ritchie siblings with 100 milligrams of the blue dye and didn't have to wait long to see results. 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. I looked at other enzymes and nothing was wrong with them. Scott, E.M. The relation of diaphorase of human erythrocytes to inheritance of methemolglobinemia, Journal of Clinical Investigation, 39, 1960.3. Having blue children did not concern them. Well, according to the official bible of literature, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a redneck is: A white person who lives in a small town or in the country especially in the southern U.S., who typically has a working-class job, and who is seen by others as being uneducated and having opinions and attitudes that are offensive.. 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. For the record, West Virginia has strict anti-incest laws. The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. I just knew that patient was going to die right there in the health department, but she wasnt atall alarmed. The enzyme eventually builds to normal levels in most children and to almost normal levels in those like Benjy, who carry one gene. 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. Its nothing.. 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. 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 get your facts straight for petes sake. score: 5 of 27 (18%) required scores: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 list stats leaders vote Vote print comments. Even so, Cawein still gets calls for advice. In the early 1960's, this blue malady caught the attention of Madison Cawein, an inquisitive hematologist from the University of Kentucky. Some sources claim their are no blue . When asked ahout it, he shakes his head and stares steadfastly ahead. The Blue People of Kentucky were first diagnosed with methemoglobinemia in the 1960s by Dr. Madison Cawein, a noted hematologist. He knew the same thing was happening in this secluded corner of Appalachia. Their inbreeding led to several medical problems and recessive genes being passed down through each child, such as one that gave some of the offspring blue skin. Give the gift of knowledge with our official 'did you know' book. 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. 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