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Blue People Of Kentucky

February 22, 2012 by · Comments Off on Blue People Of Kentucky 

Blue People Of Kentucky, When Benjamin Stacy was born in 1975, it seemed as though the legacy of the blue-skinned Fugates had resurfaced once again. The baby was rushed to the University of Kentucky Medical Center with skin so blue that it frightened doctors, but luckily his grandmother calmed concerns when she told them of the blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek, some with skin ‘bluer than Lake Louise.’

The ancestral line of blue-skinned Fugates started in 1820, with an orphan named Martin Fugate, who settled Troublesome Creek. Folklore says his skin color was an intense blue, and after marrying Elizabeth Smith, he fathered seven children, four of who were also blue. One thing led to another as often happened in isolated rural settlements, Fugates married Fugates, and a recessive gene made its way through generations.

Doctors say the Fugates probably had a deficiency in an enzyme caused by a genetic defect that caused their blue skin. Stacy’s relatives spoke of his great-grandmother, Luna Fugate, as “the bluest woman I ever saw.” But the gene pool now is diverse, as people go their separate ways, making the blood disorder much more of a rarity.

University of Indiana’s Cathy Trost has researched the blue-skinned Fugates, describing Benjamin Stacy’s skin as almost purple. She examined Benjy’s family tree and said his father remarked, “If you’ll notice — I’m kin to myself.”

The whereabouts of Benjamin Stacy today are unknown, reports Yahoo News, but his mother still lives in Hazard, Kentucky. She could not be reached for comment. Others in the area describe family members who were embarrassed about their abnormality, probably by the fact that to inherit the disorder, a person would have to have both parents with the defective genes, indicating an inbred line passing from generation to generation.

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