In normal people hemoglobin is converted to methemoglobin at a very slow rate. The couple had eight children, including Luna. What is a redneck anyways? If the condition were inherited as a recessive trait, it would appear most often in an inbred line. The story of an Appalachian malady, an inquisitive doctor, and a paradoxical cure. Benjy was a pretty big item in the hospital, his mother says with a grin. The gene would most likely appear in an inbred line. Generations later, a descendant of Martin Fugate, Benjy Stacy, would be born "blue". It has nothing to do with melanin, the amino acid that gives people darker skin tones. 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. 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. Admitted in 1863, West Virginia was the . 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. Google Maps. 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. Posted on February 25, 2023 by ourhealthva. Chasing Chains, LLC. West Virginia Blue People Text The following piece was collected at a dinner table with a group of girls out celebrating a friend's birthday. 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. 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. Studying the problem, Cawein figured out that he could convert methemoglobin to hemoglobin without the enzyme. Martin married a red-headed American woman named Elizabeth Smith and the two set up a homestead on the banks of Troublesome Creek near Hazard County, Kentucky. Somebody with only one gene would not have the condition but could pass the gene to a child. Stumped, the doctor turned to the medical literature for a clue. 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. They wouldnt come into the waiting room. So I knew we had the defect defined.. Rednecks love to shoot their guns and fish, and there are a really high number of ammo stores and bait shops in the area, per person. Archives of Internal Medicine, April, 1964.2. At last they were free of their "blue" shade and were no longer embarrassed. Are Ferne Mccann's Parents Together, DynamicFrameworks - Elite ThemeForest Author. I can see that old blue running out of my skin, he confided. Martin Fugate was a French orphan who emigrated to Kentucky in 1820 to claim a land grant on the wilderness banks of Troublesome Creek. The beautiful town of Berkeley Springs is one of the best places to visit in West Virginia. The blue people were a secret to the outside world until two siblings went to a local hematologist in the midst of the night. Most of the Fugates lived long and healthy lives. I couldnt tell you what caused it.. Jefferson County, Ohio house fire ruled arson; $5,000 reward. With Fugate blood on both his mothers and his fathers side, the boy could have received genes for the enzyme deficiency from either direction. While the substance isnt harmful, large amounts of it will tint any tissue that has blood flowing to it a blue color. I'm going to assume that by blu. She and her husband Alva have a strong sense of family. The only thing Stacy cant or wont remember is that his wife Luna was blue. Her face and her fingernails were almost indigo blue. So I knew we had the defect defined.. 1995-2022 Ancestral Findings, LLC. When asked ahout it, he shakes his head and stares steadfastly ahead. Dern it, Princeton. West Virginians became the prototypical hillbillies, and incest served as a crude scientific explanation for their downtrodden social condition. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, the portion now known as West Virginia broke off to form its own state. url('//www.incandina.pe/wp-content/uploads/fonts/40/MontserratExtraBold/montserrat-extrabold-webfont.woff') format('woff'), It like to scared me to death! The search for blue people ensued. You could tell how much it bothered them to be blue.. When West Virginia University decided to put "Black Lives Matter" decals on the back of their football helmets, the reaction by the people of . While in the hills, Cawein drove over to see Zach (Big Man) Fugate, the 76-year-old patriarch of the clan on Troublesome Creek. yes, saw that years ago, colloidal silver, damn asshole medias, just state facts, you can prove., thanks for this honest reply. Not myth or legend; The Blue People of Kentucky were an isolated enclave of Appalachian people who lived with an embarrassing skin discoloration until a young hematologist took notice and found a solution. Population: 5,258Walmart rank: 1stChew factor: 1stAmmo per capita: 9th. Scott, E.M. The relation of diaphorase of human erythrocytes to inheritance of methemolglobinemia, Journal of Clinical Investigation, 39, 1960.3. Neighboring Virginia has more than 200 per square mile. '"He was almost purple,"' his father, Alva Stacy, recalls." Cawein advised giving the child methylene blue and not worrying about it. 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. Population: 5,258Walmart rank: 1stChew factor: 1stAmmo per capita: 9th. It is almost certain that Martin was a descendant of the Fugate family of Russell County, Virginia and probably of French origin. Even so, Cawein still gets calls for advice. The following piece was collected at a dinner table with a group of girls out celebrating a friends birthday. *. Using Yelp and Google Maps, this is the criteria we used: Note: For the sake of getting reliable numbers, we counted places within a citys border, as well as within a short driving distance. The risk skyrockets if you're sharing blood.". Also, small scattered families in Grant, Preston, Randolph, Tucker, Marion, Monongahela, and Braxton counties, West Virginia. 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. 1: Mothman The granddaddy of all West Virginia monsters, Mothman has gained worldwide notoriety. Google Maps, KCR Barrel Saloon, Charles Town, WV. Curiosity drove him to Hazard where he was introduced to a nurse, Ruth Pendergrass, who had met a "dark blue" woman. 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. Typically, the blue is isolated to one part of the body. Google Maps. That iron atom binds with oxygen, which is how red blood cells circulate oxygen throughout the body. Incredibly, Benjy had inherited a gene dating back over 162 years! 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. The railroad didnt come through eastern Kentucky until the coal mines were developed around 1912, and it took another 30 or 40 years to lay down roads along the local creeks. 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. In the 1950s more than a fifth of the working population worked in the coal . 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. One of the girls, the Informant, was discussing an upcoming trip to visit her brother at West Virginia University. Yep, that's right. Patrick and Rachel Ritchie, who lived in Hardburly, were also blue. 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. They have between 20,000 and 23,000 genes in about one billion DNA base pairs. 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. Population: 5,191High school graduation rate: 70%Walmart rank: 4thDive bars and mobile home parks: 7th. We are not making that up. 9. Hemoglobin gets its red color from a compound called heme that contains an iron atom. (Baltimore: Gateway Press 1986). And at least in one famous case, a man turned his skin permanently blue from drinking too much colloidal silver supplements and rubbing colloidal silver cream on his skin (the condition is called argyria or silver poisoning). Dunlaps Gun & Pawn, Hurricane, WV. the blue color was gone from their skin, the doctor said. Cawein needed fresh blood to do an enzyme assay. Bluefield State University is a member school of the Thurgood . Written family records do not indicate Martin's skin color, but family legend says he was blue. 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. Rednecks are hailed as being great in our song lyrics. One relative describes her as blue all over, and another calls Luna the bluest woman I ever saw.. Levy married a Ritchie girl and bought 200 acres of rolling land along Ball Creek. This brief history has been gleaned from old family records, correspondence with other members, and histories of Ritchie, Barbour, Harrison and Randolph Counties, West Virginia. And they married the people who lived closest to them, the Combses, Smiths, Ritchies, and Stacys. Chapter 1: The Climate of Post-War America Chapter 2: West Virginia - The Violent Heritage Chapter 3: Political Maneuvering Chapter 4: The Creative Act of 1919 Chapter 5: Getting Organized PART II Chapter 6: The Mine Wars, 1919-1929 Chapter 7: Depression and Recovery, 1929-1939 Chapter 8: War Service, 1939-1949 Answer (1 of 3): Depends on what you mean by blue. Jaculatorias A San Antonio De Padua, The odds against it were incalculable, but Martin Fugate managed to find and marry a woman who carried the same recessive gene. Population: 10,486Mobile home parks in area: 3rd in WVBars per capita: 3rdGun stores per capita: 5th in West Virginia. People who live in West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle and parts of western Maryland found cars and other items coated in the dust from . In the Inuit communities, scientists had pinpointed the problem, a deficiency of an enzyme that converted methemoglobin to hemoglobin. Doctors were so astonished by the color of Benjy Stacys skin that they raced him by ambulance from the maternity ward in the hospital near Hazard to a medical clinic in Lexington. Eventually, the recessive gene began to disappear once coal mining and the railroad opened the community to outsiders. 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. She was as blue a woman as I ever saw.. 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. 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. So close! H & S Sporting Goods, Princeton, WV. src: url('//www.incandina.pe/wp-content/uploads/fonts/40/MontserratExtraBold/montserrat-extrabold-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'), url('//www.incandina.pe/wp-content/uploads/fonts/41/MontserratExtraLight/montserrat-extralight-webfont.svg#montserrat-extralight-webfont') format('svg'); The Registered Agent on file for this company is Mikeooney. WEST VIRGINIA (DC News Now) The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) said that it finished analyzing samples of last week's mystery dust. The doctor gave each blue family a supply of methylene blue tablets to take as a daily pill. Well, as you can imagine, I really examined them. Bluefield State is committed to being the region's leading institution of higher education. If you stayed awake in high-school biology, you might remember that blood is red because red blood cells are packed with proteins called hemoglobin. 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