SIX THINGS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT: KENTUCKY.  

  By Richard Thomas 05.27.04      KENTUCKY IS NOT JUST A BORDER STATE. We are THE border state! Our Old Kentucky Home is the place

where the South, Appalachia and the Midwest all come together to meet and mingle. Kentucky is so neither here nor there that we spent the first two years of the Civil War playing the Union and the Confederacy off each other (the Union finally got fed up with our waffling and occupied the state). We introduced the mint julep and people around the world think of us whenever fried chicken comes up. Our accent is the Appalachian Twang, not the Southern Drawl, and we play basketball as good as the best flat-landed

 

  Midwesterner. This cultural burgoo is what it means to be from the Bluegrass State.

 

#1. LOUISVILLE ISN'T IN KENTUCKY.

There are only three truly urban areas in the state: Louisville, Lexington, and "Northern Kentucky." Northern Kentucky is the common phrase used to describe that part of the Cincinnati metropolitan area which is on the other side of the Ohio River and is accidentally in Kentucky and not Ohio. Despite the infamous "Florence Y'all" water tower, Northern Kentucky is a cultural invasion from Ohio. Northern Kentucky is so much of a de facto colony of Ohio that Cincinnati International Airport is actually across the river and in Covington, Kentucky.

Louisville, the largest city in Kentucky, sits across the Ohio River from Indiana. Much like Northern Kentucky, it is a colony of its northern neighbor. While most of the people living in Northern Kentucky think of themselves as being residents of Cincinnati, people in Louisville continue to think of themselves as Kentuckians. The rest of us ain't buying it. Louisville is a Midwestern city, plain and simple. It looks and feels the same as Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, Indianapolis, or any other vanilla variety flyover city you care to name. Politically and legally, Louisville and Northern Kentucky are in Kentucky. They pay taxes to Frankfort, the state capital. Culturally, those people are in the Midwest.

 

#2. WE DON'T TALK FRENCH SO TRÈS BIEN.

Kentuckians started giving French names to everything in sight after the Marquis de Lafayette's visit of 1824-25. We've been mangling the pronunciations of these French names ever since. Give us a French word. We will name something after it and find a new and interesting way to pronounce it beyond all Gallic recognition. Lexington sits in the heart of Fayette County, not Lafayette County. No one has been able to explain where the "La" went. Versailles, a small town near Lexington that hosts the Labrot & Graham Distillery ("lab-rot" being another locally-distorted French word), is pronounced "ver sales" instead of "ver-sai." Louisville is neither the Anglicanized "Louis-ville" nor the more French "Lou-ie-ville," but simply "Lou-vull." What we've done to the name "Belcher" requires no comment.

 

#3. WE'VE GOT BLUE PEOPLE!

Lorenzo Dow Fugate and Eleanor Fugate

Being part Appalachian, Kentuckians are used to inbreeding jokes. However, there is one joke about Kentucky and inbreeding that's funny because it's true: The story of the Blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek. The Fugates were an extended family living in an isolated hollow in Eastern Kentucky ominously named Troublesome Creek. Most members of the family had "hereditary methemoglobinemia." This is an enzyme deficiency that causes a person's blood to run vein blue as opposed to arterial red. Instead of being pink, these people are tinted blue or purple. The condition is based on a recessive gene; the only way to acquire it is if both your parents pass down the love. So what were the odds of clan founder Martin Fugate taking another methemoglobinemia carrier as his wife? He did, and they settled in Troublesome Creek sometime in the mid 19th Century. Cousins marrying cousins was commonplace among isolated Appalachians, so by the time a doctor discovered the Fugates in the 1960s, there were several blue people living in the hills around Hazard.

 

#4. KENTUCKY GROWS YOUR POT!

Only two states in the Union make it into the top five global producers of both indoor and outdoor pot horticulture: Kentucky and California, and California obviously smokes way more weed than it produces. It is well-known among residents of the Bluegrass state that another kind of grass is their leading cash crop, easily beating out tobacco. Hemp grows wild all over the state, even on interstate medians. Hikers in Daniel Boone National Forest who stumble into a clearing full of cannabis need to backtrack out very carefully; pot farms are often sown with mines.

 

#5. A BAPTIST INVENTED BOURBON.

Kentucky is famous for its bourbon whiskey, but even most Kentuckians don't know that bourbon is the invention of a Baptist minister. In Kentucky's late 18th Century frontier days, cash was scarce. Many people conducted business via barter, including supporting their churches. The local minister would receive far more tithes in grain than he could ever eat or resell, so most ran distilleries. In what was then called Bourbon County (and is now Scott County), Baptist minister and notorious cheapskate Elijah Craig was no exception. As the story goes, Craig decided to burn out the inside of the oak barrels he aged his whiskey in so he could get one more use out of them. Turns out people liked the flavor imparted by Craig's charred oak more than the straight, regular-oak aged whiskey, and thus bourbon whiskey was born. The sad irony of all this is that Baptists became teetotalers and Scott County went dry.

While stolidly Baptist Scott County is now dry as a bone, local legend has it that several casks of Elijah Craig's original bourbon were placed inside the columns of the administration building of the equally Baptist Georgetown College. The legend never fails to lure guillible frat boys into trying to crack those columns open about once a decade.

 

#6. ANYONE CAN BE A KENTUCKY COLONEL.

For all the jokes about KFC's Colonel Harlan Sanders or the ABA's "Kentucky Colonels," the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels is for real. It is also not very Kentuckian anymore. Once upon a time it was common in the South for the governor to reward political supporters with a glamorous title from an appointment in the State Militia. Local notables were often "majors" or "colonels" who had never and would never lead troops. Kentucky was no exception, but we took the idea a step further. In 1885, Governor William Bradley appointed the first "Honorary" Kentucky Colonel, making the military standing even more tenuous. By the 1930s, it was a formal organization. Inductees are nominated by an existing Colonel, approved by the Governor, and go on the rolls that year as an "Honorary Adviser." There are no requirements that an inductee be either from Kentucky or even be living there at the time of his/her nomination. In addition to well-known Colonel Harlan Sanders, some very non-Kentuckians like Bob Hope, Omar Bradley, Joan Crawford, Pope John Paul II, and Mae West are all Kentucky Colonels.

S U N D A Y , M A Y 1 3 , 2 0 0 7

The Blue Fugates of Kentucky

Lorenzo & Eleanor Fugate(Image from Hazard, Kentucky &

Perry County: A Photographic History)

Around the world there are legends of human beings who have skin of a unusual shades, folk whose skin color wasn't some variation on brown or pink. These people, as they are remembered by their neighbor's descendants, were usually of a supernatural ilk - elves or gods or some other genre of sentient being. More often than not, these legends have been explained in our oh-so-enlightened civilization as the product of imaginative storytellers, bad translations, and artistic flourishes. Yet, in the relatively recent past, in the hills of eastern Kentucky, there was a clan of folk who seem to have shared a genetic anomaly that, in effect, rendered them blue.

That's right blue.

Okay, well, maybe not entirely blue - but definitely a blueish tint.

Let me explain. Once, not so long ago, the only blue men I'd ever heard of were an off-Broadway-to-Vegas post-modern performance group featured repeatedly on the late, great Arrested Development. Then, say, two days ago, I got on a certain search engine and did a blog search for recent entries that specifically included the words "West Virginia." Well, as I scrolled through, just looking for pieces of interest, I came upon a site which, as luck would have it, is an old friend of ours at HS, a site better known for its political writing than its anthropological such have yous - West Virginia Blue. The entry was on the blue men, not of West Virginia, but of the Mountain State's neighbor, Kentucky, and it focused primarily on an article published in Science way back in 1982 - you can find that article here, but I want to quote a couple points for you.Madison Cawein began hearing rumors about the blue people when he went to work at the University of Kentucky's Lexington medical clinic in 1960. "I'm a hematologist, so something like that perks up my ears," Cawein says, sipping on whiskey sours and letting his mind slip back to the summer he spent "tromping around the hills looking for blue people."Cawein is no stranger to eccentricities of the body. He helped isolate an antidote for cholera, and he did some of the early work on L-dopa, the drug for Parkinson's disease. But his first love, which he developed as an Army medical technician in World War II, was hematology. "Blood cells always looked so beautiful to me," he says.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 he'd heard rumors about. The American Heart Association had a clinic in Hazard, and it was there that Cawein met "a great big nurse" who offered to help.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. "Her face and her fingernails were almost indigo blue. It like to scared me to death! She looked like she was having a heart attack. I just knew that patient was going to die right there in the health department, but she wasn't a'tall alarmed. She told me that her family was the blue Combses who lived up on Ball Creek. 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. 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.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. By the time they'd get to the top, the person would be gone. Finally, one day when the frustrated doctor was idling inside the Hazard clinic, Patrick and Rachel Ritchie walked in.

"They were bluer'n hell," Cawein says. "Well, as you can imagine, I really examined them. After concluding that there was no evidence of heart disease, I said 'Aha!' I started asking them questions: 'Do you have any relatives who are blue?' then I sat down and we began to chart the family."Cawein remembers the pain that showed on the Ritchie brother's and sister's faces. "They were really embarrassed about being blue," he said. "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."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. Methemoglobin which is blue, is a nonfunctional form of the red hemoglobin that carries oxygen. It is the color of oxygen-depleted blood seen in the blue veins just below the skin.Okay - that is only a slice of the article - - - you should really read the entire bit, frankly - it'll be well worth your time. When you've reached the end you'll understand why, even with diligent searches of the internet, you're unlikely to find many pictures of blue men or women, Kentuckian or otherwise - because those people affected with this genetic anomaly (I won't call it a defect or even a handicap, because I haven't read of any disabling physiological effects) fear, quite logically, that society would drag them out for public exposition. It is sad, really - a physical trait that could add to someone's uniqueness has had to be hidden out of fear that it will be exploited by the foulest pimps of the entertainment and yellow journalism - both printed and video tabloids. Indeed, I find it interesting that most of those folks interacting with the blue Fugates blame the geography of east Kentucky alone for their genetic inbreeding - I can't remember that any of them make the connection between their hesitancy to leave their family connections and the fact that these people, rational beings all, knew how they would be insulted, feared, abused, and most likely, very, very lonely. Ah well.

If you're interested, I have a few more links for you - not a ton, but enough to keep your eyes moving for a few minutes at least. . . consider:

The Radford University Geography Blog entry on "The Blue People of Kentucky"

The Straight Dope's "Is There Really a Race of Blue People?"

Wikipedia on "Methmoglobinemia"

POSTED BY ERIC DRUMMOND SMITH AT 12:57 PM  

LABELS: APPALACHIA, APPALACHIAN HISTORY, BLUE FUGATES, HAZARD,

KENTUCKY, MEDICINE, SOCIOLOGY

About the Blue People of Kentuky

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By Michelle RaseyeHow Contributing Writer

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About the Blue People of Kentuky

The reclusive Blue People of Kentucky have a genetic blood disorder called methemoglobinemia that manifests as blue skin. The National Institutes of Health report there is no data on how many people are affected by methemoglobinemia, but the most famous incidences are the Blue People of Kentucky and the Lurgan family from Ireland.

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The Fugates

1. According to writer Cathy Trost who has written extensively on the subject, the Blue People of Kentucky are actually members of the Fugate family located in Hazard, Kentucky. During the 1800s, Martin Fugate settled into the area, and despite being blue, married into the Smith family. Against all odds, the Smiths happened to be carriers for methemoglobinemia, which allowed the disorder to be passed onto their children. The family stayed in the area and continued to produce blue children with the last documented case rumored to have occurred in the 1970s.

Dr. Cawein

2. The Blue People of Kentucky were first diagnosed with methemoglobinemia in the 1960s by Dr. Madison Cawein, a noted hematologist. Folklore maintained the Fugates were blue due to heart disease or lung problems. However, Dr. Cawein's examination found the descendents of Martin Fugate to be in good health, which caused him to suspect a hereditary form of methmoglobinemia. He mapped the family tree, noting which ancestors had blue skin and drew blood from multiple family members for analysis. Dr. Cawein later published a paper on the Blue People of Kentucky in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Diagnosis

3. Diagnosis of the Blue People of Kentucky relied on the work of Dr. Scott who had studied Eskimos with methmoglobinemia in Alaska. Dr. Scott's research, reported in a 1960 edition of the "Journal of Clinical Investigation," isolated the exact mechanism of action for methmoglobinemia , a missing enzyme in red blood cells. The absence of this essential enzyme, called diaphorase, allowed the deoxygenated components of red blood cells to build up in the body, giving it a blue cast.

Treatment

4. The treatment for methmoglobenemia is simple and has an ironic twist. Dr. Cawein prescribed a blue dye called methylene blue, which causes the body to compensate for the lack of diaphorase. With just a few pills a day, the blue people of Kentucky were able to cure their methmoglobinemia. The treatment is temporary as the methylene blue is excreted in urine, making daily medication necessary to maintain normal skin tone.

Symptoms and Causes

5. Methmoglobinemia, in the case of the Fugates, is genetic, requiring recessive genes from both parents in order for the disorder to manifest in offspring. Methmoglobinemia can also be acquired as a result of chemical exposure, antibiotics and anesthetics. Aside from skin turning blue, symptoms also include shortness of breath, fatigue, dizziness, and fainting. More extreme cases may result in heart arrhythmia, seizures, coma and death. However, the Blue People of Kentucky have lived long, healthy lives with no ill effects from their condition.

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Six generations after a French orphan named Martin Fugate settled on the banks of eastern Kentucky's Troublesome Creek with his redheaded American bride, his great-great-great great grandson was born in a modern hospital not far from where the creek still runs.

The boy inherited his father's lankiness and his mother's slightly nasal way of speaking.

What he got from Martin Fugate was dark blue skin. "It was almost purple," his father recalls.

Doctors were so astonished by the color of Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy's skin that they raced him by ambulance from the maternity ward in the hospital near Hazard to a medical clinic in Lexington.

Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s

Two days of tests produced no explanation for skin the color of a bruised plum.

A transfusion was being prepared when Benjamin's grandmother spoke up. "Have you ever heard of the blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek?" she asked the doctors.

"My grandmother Luna on my dad's side was a blue Fugate. It was real bad in her," Alva Stacy, the boy's father, explained. "The doctors finally came to the conclusion that Benjamin's color was due to blood inherited from generations back."

Benjamin 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. 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 Benjamin's birth that they would crowd around the baby and try to make him cry. "Benjamin was a pretty big item in the hospital," his mother says with a grin.

Dark blue lips and fingernails are the only traces of Martin Fugate's 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.

They're known simply as the "blue people" in the hills and hollows around Troublesome and Ball Creeks. Most lived to their 80s and 90s without serious illness associated with the skin discoloration. For some, though, there was a pain not seen in lab tests. That was the pain of being blue in a world that is mostly shades of white to black.

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. 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 Fugate's descendants had multiplied their recessive genes all over the Cumberland Plateau.

Madison Cawein began hearing rumors about the blue people when he went to work at the University of Kentucky's Lexington medical clinic in 1960. "I'm a hematologist, so something like that perks up my ears," Cawein says, sipping on whiskey sours and letting his mind slip back to the summer he spent "tromping around the hills looking for blue people."

Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s

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 he'd heard rumors about. The American Heart Association had a clinic in Hazard, and it was there that Cawein met "a great big nurse" who offered to help.

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. "Her face and her fingernails were almost indigo blue. It like to scared me to death! She looked like she was having a heart attack. I just knew that patient was going to die right there in the health department, but she wasn't a'tall alarmed. She told me that her family was the blue Combses who lived up on Ball Creek. 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. 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.

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. By the time they'd get to the top, the person would be gone. Finally, one day when the frustrated doctor was idling inside the Hazard clinic, Patrick and Rachel Ritchie walked in.

They were bluer'n hell," Cawein says. "Well, as you can imagine, I really examined them. After concluding that there was no evidence of heart disease, I said 'Aha!' I started asking them questions: 'Do you have any relatives who are blue?' then I sat down and we began to chart the family."

Cawein remembers the pain that showed on the Ritchie brother's and sister's faces. "They were really embarrassed about being blue," he said. "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."

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

Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s

blood. Methemoglobin which is blue, is a nonfunctional form of the red hemoglobin that carries oxygen. It is the color of oxygen-depleted blood seen in the blue veins just below the skin.

If the blue people did have methemoglobinemia, the next step was to find out the cause. 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.

Cawein drew "lots of blood" from the Ritchies and hurried back to his lab. He tested first for abnormal hemoglobin, but the results were negative.

Stumped, the doctor turned to the medical literature for a clue. He found references to methemoglobinemia dating to the turn of the century, but it wasn't until he came across E. M. Scott's 1960 report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (vol. 39, 1960) that the answer began to emerge.

Scott was a Public Health Service doctor at the Arctic Health Research Center in Anchorage who had discovered hereditary methemoglobinemia among Alaskan Eskimos and Indians. It was caused, Scott speculated, by an absence of the enzyme diaphorase from their red blood cells. In normal people hemoglobin is converted to methemoglobin at a very slow rate. If this conversion continued, all the body's hemoglobin would eventually be rendered useless. Normally diaphorase converts methemoglobin back to hemoglobin. Scott also concluded that the condition was inherited as a simple recessive trait. In other words, to get the disorder, a person would have to inherit two genes for it, one from each parent. Somebody with only one gene would not have the condition but could pass the gene to a child.

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Scott's Alaskans seemed to match Cawein's blue people. If the condition were inherited as a recessive trait, it would appear most often in an inbred line.

Cawein needed fresh blood to do an enzyme assay. He had to drive eight hours back to Hazard to search out the Ritchies, who lived in a tapped-out mining town called Hardburly. They took the doctor to see their uncle, who was blue, too. While in the hills, Cawein drove over to see Zach (Big Man) Fugate, the 76-year-old patriarch of the clan on Troublesome Creek. His car gave out on the dirt road to Zach's house, and the doctor had to borrow a Jeep from a filling station.

Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s

Zach took the doctor even farther up Copperhead Hollow to see his Aunt Bessie Fugate, who was blue. Bessie had an iron pot of clothes boiling in her front yard, but she graciously allowed the doctor to draw some of her blood.

Just like the Alaskans, their blood had accumulated so much of the blue molecule that it over- whelmed the red of normal hcmoglobin that shows through as pink in the skin of most Caucasians.

Once he had the enzyme deficiency isolated, methyleneblue sprang to Cawein's mind as the "perfectly obvious" antidote. Some of the blue people thought the doctor was slightly addled for suggesting that a blue dye could turn them pink. But Cawein knew from earlier studies that the body has an alternative method of converting methemoglobin back to normal. 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 packed his black bag and rounded up Nurse Pendergrass for the big event. They went over to Patrick and Rachel Ritchie's house and injected each of them with 100 milligrams of methylene blue.

''Within a few minutes. the blue color was gone from their skin," the doctor said. "For the first time in their lives, they were pink. They were delighted."

"They changed colors!" remembered Pendergrass. "It was really something exciting to see."

The doctor gave each blue family a supply of methylene blue tablets to take as a daily pill. The drug's effects are temporary, as methylene blue is normally excreted in the urine. One day, one of the older mountain men cornered the doctor. "I can see that old blue running out of my skin," he confided.

Before Cawein ended his study of the blue people, he returned to the mountains to patch together the long and twisted journey of Martin Fugate's recessive gene. From a history of Perry County and some Fugate family Bibles listing ancestors, Cawein has constructed a fairly complete story.

Martin Fugate was a French orphan who emigrated to Kentucky in 1820 to claim a land grant on the wilderness banks of Troublesome Creek. 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.

Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s

The odds against it were incalculable, but Martin Fugate managed to find and marry a woman who carried the same recessive gene. Elizabeth Smith, apparently, was as pale-skinned as the mountain laurel that blooms every spring around the creek hollows.

Martin and Elizabeth set up housekeeping on the banks of Troublesome and began a family. Of their seven children, four were reported to be blue.

The clan kept multiplying. Fugates married other Fugates. Sometimes they married first cousins. And they married the people who lived closest to them, the Combses, Smiths, Ritchies, and Stacys. All lived in isolation from the world, bunched in log cabins up and down the hollows, and so it was only natural that a boy married the girl next door, even if she had the same last name.

The railroad didn't 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.

Martin and Elizabeth Fugate's blue children multiplied in this natural isolation tank. The marriage of one of their blue boys, Zachariah, to his mother's sister triggered the line of succession that would result in the birth, more than 100 years later, of Benjamin Stacy.

As coal mining and the railroads brought progress to Kentucky, the blue Fugates started moving out of their communities and marrying other people. 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.

Bewnjamin Stacy is one of the last of the blue Fugates. With Fugate blood on both his mother's and his father's side, the boy could have received genes for the enzyme deficiency from either direction. Because the boy was intensely blue at birth but then recovered his normal skin tones, Benjamin is assumed to have inherlted only one gene for the condition. Such people tend to be very blue only at birth, probably because newborns normally have smaller amounts of diaphorase. The enzyme eventually builds to normal levels in most children and to almost normal levels in those like Benjamin, who carry one gene.

Cawein and his colleagues published their research on hereditary diaphorase deficiency in the Archives of Internal Medicine (April, 1964) in 1964. He hasn't studied the condition for years. Even so, Cawein still gets calls for advice. One came from a blue Flugate who'd joined the Army and been sent to Panama, where his son was born bright blue. Cawein advised giving the child methylene blue and not worrying about it. Note: In this instance the reason for cyanosis was not methemoglobinemia but Rh incompatibility. This information supplied by John Graves whose uncle was the father of the child.

The Blue People .Mary Sutherland copyright 2004

Linking the Blue People to the 'Fallen' Angels and the "EL" God.

Although  mankind has techically progressed since the days of Abraham, I question our intellectual progresson. Monday through Saturday our reality is tunnel visioned into what we see,  touch and feel. And then Sunday rolls around and off we go to worship an 'invisible' god and his hierarchy of equally invisible angels. Through the week, man shuts  his ears and eyes and perception off to the voices and presence of the invisible ones, but will go to Church and listen to a pastor relay the messages of those in the past that had not closed their ears and eyes and perception off to what they caled 'lords, angels, devils and demons'.

The foundation of the Church is based on "Faith" and teaches us to "believe" in entities  we cannot "see"  "Physically" speaking this type of instruction is almost laughable...but "metaphysically" this opens up a whole new world - a world of "possible" impossibilities- a world of gods, angels, demons, elementals, inter-dimensional creatures, inner earth beings and UFOs.

By using biblical text and an "open" mind, the "illusion" of god and the angels is dropped and reality sets in... a reality that shows god and his angels or elohim as extraterrerial humanoids known as the "ELS" who had some  very advanced technology as well as occult knowledge. the  root word "El" is found in the word Ang (el),  (El)ohim and the angelic names of Samu (el), Rapha (el),Gabri (el), Micha (el)  etc.

Genesis describes the (El)ohim and Ang(els) as giant in stature who walked and ate with man and procreated with the women of earth. Based off this biblical discription, we now them as giants who had a digestive system, reproductive organs and fertile. They also appeared like men dressed in "Shining Garmets"  (Luke 24:4)

The Book of Numbers describe how they live amongst us without being seen by man, yet  perceived by animals. Book of Numbers 22:23-31..."Now the donkey saw the Angel of the Lord standing in the way with his sword drawn in his hand and the donkey turned aside out of the way and went into the field. So Balaam , not being able to see the angel, struck the donkey to turn her back onto the road. " Going on in Book of Numbers, it reads.... " Then the Lord opened Balaam's eyes and he saw the Angel of the Lord standing in the way with his drawn sword in his hand and he bowed his head and fell flat on his face."Kings 6:17 records Elisha's request to have a man's eyes opened and it was granted and he saw things he formerly could not. "And Elisha prayed, and said, "Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see." Then the lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha."

The bible states that the angels walked with man and taught them  the arts, math, astrology, husbandry, medicine, the skills of making metal, etc.  And according to ancient texts, the people of Atlantis received their knowledge from the sunken Continent of Lemuria (MU).  Mark S. Miller, a

student of anthropology for over 30 years.stumbled across a reference to a 'former' race of humanoids who were described as  'BLUE'.  It was through Mark Miller that I learned there was "not" just four races of mankind, but five races. The Fifth Race, known as the "Blue Moovians"  lived on an 'unknown' continent in the middle of the ocean between Asia and Europe. This---according to all the old maps--was Mu (Lemuria)

The Blue Moovians fit the description of the biblical angels, described as very tall, thin, with extremely large heads. They possessed all manners of powers of the mind: teleportation, telekinesis and ESP.  According to some ancient texts, one day , for reasons known only to them, they conveyed to the humans of earth that they had,  through their powers of astral projection, located a planet more suitable to their needs in a far distant solar system or galaxy and departed Earth. Miller believes that each and everyone disappeared from the face of the earth, teleporting themselves to this far away planet. I submit, that there were those that had fallen to the lower vibrations of the earth and were or could not leave this plane...thus bound to this earth . One of these places they called  HELL.  This supposedly occurred about 60,000 BC.

In my research, I always watch for the 'root' words as clues to the lost knowledge.  And in the root of  'Nor' I found the missing link to the Blue (Moo)vians and the latter (Nor)dics in a little known (Nor)wegian myth about  a rarely seen island the locals call "Formørk Øy" (or "Cloud Island"). It is supposedly 400 or so miles from the shores of (Mo) skenesøya due east from the tip of HELL. (That's right~Hell.) It is called Cloud Island because, when it is seen, it is perpetually shrouded in a cloud cover.  (How many of us researchers have heard the story of UFOs hiding themselves in a cloud!) This place, again like the legends of Shambala, has the ability to veil itself from the eyes of humans.  It holds no place on any map because the actual distance is unknown, the island cannot be seen from above, despite numerous attempts, and no one can prove that they've actually set foot on it's shores, if it has any. Only treacherous cliffs are observed, and none has reached it or even gone all the way round it. The main reason it isn't included on any map are the many superstitions related to the island and its inhabitants.

In the villages, tales are told about fishing voyages in proximity of this mysterious island seeing strange, dark ships in it's waters with crews of very tall people in equally mysterious garb ( Garments that SHIMMER..refer back to the description of the garments of the Angels at the Tomb of Jesus in Luke 24:4.  These crewmen have been reported to have a low blue tint to their skins. The people of the area call them "Delvar Nar". .

Any attempts to approach the island are thwarted by the ocean herself, never allowing the ships to get closer than 100 or so miles. No structures of any kind have ever been observed, no emperical clues of habitation except for those dark ships. Even through binoculars the ships are always seen barely out of focus, surrounded in fog and mist from the sea.The fishermen of the villages believe that these peole are blue-toned supernatural humanoids  (ang (els)?) and stay clear from the island, despite the excellent fishing conditions.

Explorer Jacques Cousteau once boasted about coming in contact with a similar people. His description of the blue people he saw as smaller in stature, roughly the height of an average human. However..these people may have been the descents of the Blue Moovians as I will get to later on in this article.

There were papers found in a chest belonging to a Norseman ,  which  told a story about a fishing vessel that was lost to a fierce storm  decades ago. Of the thirty man crew, only two survived. After being found by some locals, several days later, the survivors told an incredible story of being rescued at sea by tall, muscular, dark blue men who yanked them from the freezing waters and brought them aboard their ship, made of a black wood that neither of them had seen before.  Their rescuers wore  long coats with high collars, made of a material  that appeared to SHIMMER  black and blue as it moved in the wind. The men were bald but had shiny black hair from the base of the skull and fanned outward a bit. Some wore a black metallic band around their foreheads with unknown markings etched in them, others had hats with rounded top and wide brims, and all wore belts with strange objects attached. Their eyes were dark as midnight under low arches and a hint of a brow. They were never spoken to directly at first, but could hear mumblings in a language they were not  familiar with as their rescuers  conversed amongst themselves.

The men  were stowed in a small room below deck with little light emanating from unseen lamps. The room itself held nothing but cushions atop a dark rug, ornately decorated with silver designs, again like nothing they had seen before.

They were silently given fresh water, thick blankets, and a plate of meats and fruit. After some hours, the doors to the hatch were opened and sunlight streamed in. They were gently taken by the arm and led off the vessel and into a smaller boat of the same design. That  boat appeared to be docked between two high cliffs in a narrow bay that tapered off into the distance and seemed to have no end. One of the rescued men glanced up at the cliffs and swore he saw windows and doors with light pouring out from them, but that could not be accessable from the bay itself, being hundreds of feet above their position.

One Delvar Nar finally spoke to them saying, in perfect Norska, "We will take you home now." It was then that the men noticed his rescuers skin closely matched that of his long coat, subtly changing hue from the darker blue to slightly lighter shades, as ripples across a pond. They thought it might be a reflection from the sea, but their position on the boat betrayed that thought as the edge of the boat was a few feet away. The Delvar Nar's voice was low and melodic, making the two men feel  drowsy. They felt a felt a warm mist envelop them until they then found themselves in the forest a few miles from their village.

From that day on, the villagers swore to leave the island in peace and never discuss it with outsiders.

COULD THIS BE THE LANDS OF  'HELL'

From the books of the Israelites we have our legends of the Ang (els) but there are other ancient books that describe such spiritual beings. And they are deplicted as having a blue tint to their skin.  The  Bhagavad-gita supports a very ancient race of a  blue skinned race with its stories of Lord Krishna. Instead of being an Ang (el) Krishna was described like that of an 'Avatar' , god or demi-god. According the the Bhagavad-gita he was a teacher who taught  the workings of creation and gave an  understanding of a self-realized soul . He taught the people the science of yoga in all its

forms - -the path of work, the path of knowledge, the path of mysticism, the path of devotion. He was also depicted with 'blue skin' Shiva is also depicted as  'dark blue'

AINUDavid DeGraff brings up another interesting angel for my research of this Blue Race. This was the Ainu who were an  indigenous  people living in Japan whose skin hue is often described as blue.

THE BLUE FUGGETS OF KENTUCKY

Modern Medicine would like to write this off as a 'disease' of sorts. The Smithsonian even tried to pass it off as dirt ..BUT...I believe that this race of people did exist and that their existence appeared  from time to time through a recessive gene.Evidence of this may be found in the lineage of the Blue Fugate Families in  Kentucky. Special thank you to Glenn Rabenold for pointing me in the right direction in my search for the mysterious Blue People of the Cherokee Legends.

Reference:Adapted from an article in Science 82, November 1982 by Cathy TrostFor more information on the Blue Fugates of Kentucky  go to google.com and type in blue fugates

It all started over 6 generations ago after a French orphan named Martin Fugate claimed a land grant in 1820 and settled on the banks of eastern Kentucky's Troublesome Creek, with his red-headed American bride, the former Elizabeth Smith, whose skin was as pale as the mountain laurel that blooms every spring around the creek hollows. The Fugates had seven children, four were reported to be blue. The clan kept multiplying. Fugates married other Fugates. Sometimes they married first cousins. And they married the people who lived closest to them, the Combses, Smiths, Ritchies, and Stacys. All lived in isolation from the world, bunched in log cabins up and down the hollows, and so it was only natural that a boy married the girl next door, even if she had the same last name."When they settled this country back then, there was no roads. It was hard to get out, so they intermarried," says Dennis Stacy who counts Fugate blood in his own veins.

Martin and Elizabeth Fugate's blue children multiplied in this natural isolation tank. The marriage of one of their blue boys, Zachariah, to his mother's sister triggered the line of succession that would result in the birth, more than 100 years later of Benjy Stacy. When Benjy was born with purple skin, his relatives told the perplexed doctors about his great grandmother Luna Fugate. One relative described her as "blue all over" and another calls Luna "the bluest woman I ever saw". Luna's father, Levy Fugate, was one of Zachariah Fugate's sons. Levy married a Ritchie girl and bought 200 acres of rolling land along Ball Creek. The couple had 8 children, including Luna. A fellow by the name of John Stacy spotted Luna at Sunday services of the Old Regular Baptist Church before the turn of the

century. Stacy courted her, married her, and moved from Troublesome Creek to make a living in timber on her daddy's land. John Stacy still lives on Lick Branch of Ball Creek. Stacy recalls that his father-in-law, Levy Fugate, was "part of the family that showed blue. All them old fellers way back then was blue. One of em - I remember seeing him when I was just a boy - Blue Anze, they called him. Most of them old people we by that name - the blue Fugates. It run in that generation who lived up and down Ball Creek".

"They looked like anybody else, cept they had the blue color," Stacy said.

"The bluest Fugates I ever saw was Luna and her kin," said Carrie Lee Kilburn, a nurse at the rural medical center called Homeplace Center. "Luna was bluish all over. Her lips were as dark as a bruise. She was as blue a woman as I ever saw."

Luna Stacy possessed the good health common to the blue people bearing at least 13 children before she died at 84. The clinic rarely saw her and never for anything serious.

Benjy Stacy was born in a modern hospital near Hazard, Kentucky, not far from Troublesome Creek. He inherited his father's lankiness and his mother's red hair but what he got from his great, great, great grandfather was dark blue skin! The doctors were astonished, not so the parents, but the boy was rushed off to a medical clinic in Lexington (University of Kentucky Medical School). Two days of tests showed no cause for Benjy's blue skin.

Benjy's grandmother Stacy asked the doctor's if they had heard of the blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek. Put on that track, they concluded that Benjy's condition was inherited. Benjy lost his blue tint within a few weeks and now he is about as normal a 7-year old boy as you might imagine. His lips and fingernails still turn a purplish blue when he gets cold or angry and that trait was exploited by the medical students back when Benjy was an infant.

I believe that this family carried the recessive gene of an ancient race that we thought left our earth plane thousands of years ago.

Several years ago, I came across a report done by the British on the Native American Indian. According to the report, the Cherokee talked of these blue skinned people that lived on the land before the Cherokee. It was reported that the Cherokee wiped them out.

Through an inteview I did with Blue Otter,  Cherokee Indian himself and author of Prophecy Keepers, I found out that these blue skinned people were not wiped out but lived in the caves below the surface of the earth. He told me that the Cherokee accounts tell that when they came into this land, they found many gardens but not the people that would have tended to the gardens. Later they found that these people of the gardens lived underground and came out only at night to tend the gardens. The food was harvested and then taken back underground to the homes they had there.  These people had blue skin , large eyes .  The sun rays were too harsh for them on the surface so they chose to live underground away from the harsh rays of the sun and only come out at night using the light of the moon.  The Cherokee called them 'the moon people'.

Although it was assumed that this race of blue skinned people were wiped out by the Cherokee, we

discovered recently  that this may not be true. Several men were exploring some deep caves in Arkansas. After going down so deep,  someone or thing started throwing rocks at them, apparently attempting to discourage them from going any deeper into the cave.  The men scared off whatever or whoever it was that were throwing the stones and continued to go down deeper . After about 1 mile down into the cave they came upon some plastic type tansparent tubes . At this point they could not go any further. But they could see a city on the other side and saw several people with blue skin.

TUAREG..BERBERS OF THE SAHARA

"Berbers of the Sahara, numbering close to 2 million. They have preserved their ancient alphabet, which is related to that used by ancient Libyans. The Tuaregs traditionally maintained a feudal system consisting of a small number of noble families, a large majority of vassals, and a lower class of black non-Tuareg serfs, who performed the agricultural tasks. The upper classes, organized in tribes, convoyed caravans and, until subdued by France, were feared as raiders. The fiercely independent Tuareg resented European hegemony in Africa, and they long resisted conquest. Tuareg men go veiled, while the women are unveiled. Women enjoy respect and freedom, and descent and inheritance are through the female line. Though nominally Muslim, the people still retain many pre-Islamic rites and customs. The traditional way of life for the Tuaregs (e.g., raiding neighboring tribes, leading caravans, and exacting taxes from trans-Sahara travelers) has changed."

According to a few obscure references to the Tuareg in the manuscripts of Tzaadi Suvau, from which this Legend surfaces, (as well as the stories Bestefar had told), there is a link between these people and the Delvar Nar. They are often referred to as "The Blue Men of The Desert." Suvau provides no further details other than the word Tuareg, at least that I have yet found. Much more to go through.Anyway, I find it fascinating that these particular muslims operate rather in the reverse of the traditional muslim; a matriarchal foundation which could also link them back to the Lemurians.

THE ANISHNABE NATION PROPHECY OF THE BLUE PEOPLE

"According to the prophecy, there are four groups of people: the red, the yellow, the black and the white. Courchene says that from today's youth a new group of people will be born - the blue people, who will be tolerant of each other, and will bring spiritual harmony and sacredness back to the earth. This will prepare the way for a rebirth of Mother Earth. "

The Straight Dope

As a student of anthropology some 30 years ago ,I  stumbled across reference to a former race of humanoids who were blue. Once, in addition to the four known races of mankind, there was a fifth race that dwelled on an unknown continent in the middle of the ocean between Asia and Europe (i.e., North America). This race, the most ancient of all, was called the Blue Moovians. They were very tall, about seven feet, and very thin, and had extremely large heads. They possessed all manners of powers of the mind: teleportation, telekinesis, ESP. One day, in response to a stimulus known only to them, they conveyed to regular humans that they had, through their powers of astral projection, located a planet more suitable to their needs in a far distant solar system or galaxy, and

all at once they each and every one disappeared from the face of the earth and teleported themselves there, never to be seen or heard from again. This supposedly occurred about 60,000 BC. --Mark S. Miller---------My husband swears that when he took anthropology they talked about a race of blue people.  --Lonijo, via AOL-----------The Picts were an early race of Scotsmen who fought naked and painted themselves blue with woad. They were known as the blue people. --Tom Riemers  -----------You completely missed the Ainu, an indigenous people living in Japan whose skin hue is often described as blue. --David de Graaf --------In Irish-Scottish Gaeilge (or Gaelic), people of African descent were historically referred to as the fir gorum, or blue men. People of this race were described as "blue" rather than as "black."  --Ed O'Neill

UPDATE: February 2009

When the Cherokee migrated to Tennessee they found the region inhabited by a race of blue skinned little people, who they called the 'Moon Eye'. Their eyes were very large and sensitive to light. They lived in the earth below, but had their gardens on the surface and would come out only at night to tend to them. Benjamin Smith Barton's 'NEW VIEWS OF THE ORIGINS OF THE TRIBES AND NATIONS OF AMERICA' (1798),

-------------------------

Blue Race aka: Star Warriors, Moon-eyes Description: The Blues are said to have translucent skin, large almond shaped eyes extremely sensitive to light and small of stature. Origin: They claim to be descendants of Noah who traveled to the Western Hemisphere a few centuries following the deluge and discovered ancient antediluvian cavern systems and ancient technologies which had been abandoned by the antediluvians in deep subterranean recesses. They have been encountered mostly in deep cavern-systems beneath the general region of the Ozarks-Arkansas and surrounding regions. Attitude : These peaceful people may, according to some accounts, be allied to the 'Nordics' and/or 'Blondes'. Witness Allegedly encountered on the moon by our US astronauts according to John Lear and others. According to Morningsky (Hopi/Apache dancer) the first alien contact started about 1947 - 1948 with the Greys contacting the U.S. Government to form a treaty with them. Another body of Aliens arrived, called the Blues. The Blues advised the government not to deal with the Greys saying it would only lead to disaster. They told the U.S. to follow your own path. They said they would teach with peace and harmony if men would disarm and listen. The military said no deal. (This information can also be verified through the MJ12 papers MS ) So they left, but a few decided to remain and stayed in Northern Mexico and Arizona and made a treaty with the Hopi Indians. These Aliens are

known by the Hopi as Star Warriors. The Greys started monitoring the Blues. So the Blues had to flee the reservation and go into hiding, a few of the Elders went with them. The Hopi legend is that there were two races, the children of the feather who came from the skies, and the children of the reptile who came from under the earth. The children of the reptile chased the Hopi Indians out of the earth; these evil under-grounders were also called two hearts    Information provided to Mary Sutherland by Patrick

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. 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 Fugate's descendants had multiplied their recessive genes all over the Cumberland Plateau.

The Blue People of the Kentucky HillsAugust 12, 2009 by

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The Fugates Suffer from the Medical Condition Methemoglobinemia

People often say things like "that's a family trait" or "it runs in the family" when talking about little quirks in

their genetics like double jointed thumbs, curly hair or freckles. And of course we all know many negative

things are passed on genetically including many different

 deformities and illnesses. What if you belonged to a family where the trait in question being passed on

was so unusual and so apparent, it may seem to the world like you were part of a completely different

race? That's what the whisperings were about the residents of a small community near Hazard, Kentucky.

In 1820, a man named Martin Fugate settled in the hills of the area of Troublesome Creek. He was a

French orphan who married an American woman named Elizabeth Smith. Of their seven children, four

were blue. It is now known that Martin and Elizabeth were both carriers of a recessive gene for a rare

blood disorder.

Methemoglobinemia is a disorder in which the body can't recycle hemoglobin (hemoglobin is found in red

blood cells and carries oxygen) and sometimes is unable to effectively bring oxygen to tissues. Therefore,

there is a lot of extra, unused oxygen circulating in the bloodstream. It usually is a temporary condition

caused by reactions to certain drugs or chemicals. Much less common is the inherited variety.

Fortunately, the Fugates had a largely harmless version called Type 1, in which blue skin coloring is its

only symptom. In fact, they were otherwise able-bodied, living long lives and having many healthy

children, even if some of them had odd skin tones. The coloring of some of Martin Fugate's descendents

ranged from a light blue tinge of the lips and fingernails to deep purple and indigo.

The Fugates intermarried with the local families- the Stacys, Combses, Ritchies, and Smiths. Eventually,

because of the isolated and rural area, cousins married cousins and so the recessive gene showed up

more and more often. Although, many were embarrassed by their blueness and didn't venture too far from

their isolated home community, their appearance was shocking enough that rumors soon spread far and

wide.

The Fugates Suffer from the Medical Condition Methemoglobinemia

In the 1960s, a doctor by the name of Cawein came to hear about them and enlisted the aid of a nurse,

Ruth Pendergrass, who through diligence and chance finally tracked down some of the blue people. After

ruling out other possibilities he confirmed the diagnosis as Methemoglobinemia. He

 prescribed "methylene blue" which brought the hemoglobin to a reduced oxygen-carrying state. Within minutes of an injection his subjects were a normal pink coloring for the first time in their lives. The treatment was a success and the patients were overjoyed.

If you're in Kentucky and think you can track down one of these "blue people" for sightseeing, your out of luck. Since that time people from that area have moved out and new people have settled in the area and much less intermarriage from the Fugate lines has occurred. The last "blue baby" to be born was in 1975 and after causing a sensation at the hospital, transformed to a normal skin tone within a few weeks. Even if there are other Methemoglobinemia sufferers, they can easily treat their condition with methylene blue tablets that are inexpensive and mainly without side effects. Also, those who remember the days of the Blue Fugates in large numbers showing their unusual blue tinted skin, probably won't be inclined to speak to most outsiders. They are distressed about stereotypes and there has also been a recent controversy about the accuracy of the Fugate genealogy. Several errors have been found and most of them involve pairings where the couple is not as closely related as previously presumed.

Sources:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kyperry3/Blue_Fugates_Troublesome_Creek.html

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000562.htm

Home » Biology » Human Biology » The Blue People of Troublesome Creek, KYThe Blue People of Troublesome Creek, KYPublished by Ben McCalla November 16, 2008, Category: Human Biology

A genetic view of the physically blue people who live in Troublesome Creek, KY.

The Fugate family and their unusual skin tone weave a tale of accidental inbreeding and the carrying of troublesome recessive traits for the disease methemoglobonemia, causing the family member’s skin to appear a ghostly blue. The skin tone is caused not by a change in light

absorbing melanin, but instead from the methemoglobin levels in the blood. Methemoglobin is naturally found in very low levels in the blood, and methemoglobonemia causes enzymes preventing a raised level of methemoglobin to not form.The story of the Fugate family started in 1820 when a French orphan named Martin Fugate settled on the eastern bank of Troublesome Creek in Kentucky. Martin had visible methehemoglobonemia., meaning that he was the offspring of two carriers. His wife, Elizabeth Fugate (formerly Elizabeth Smith) also happened to be a carrier of the disease, although it was a recessive trait of which she was only a carrier. This means that for the disorder, Martin had an mm genotype and Elizabeth had an Mm genotype in which m = methemoglobonemia positive and M = methemoglobonemia negative, M is the dominant trait. So, if a Punnet square were created for an F1 generation it would look like this:

So according to this Punnet square, 50% of Martin’s offspring are expected to be visibly methemoglobonemic and all are carriers of the gene. In actuality, 4 of their 7 children appeared blue in color, so roughly 57%. Thus started the chain of inbreeding, most of the time unknowingly. In small communities it just happens sometimes. That first or distant cousins would marry each other without knowledge of any family relationship between them