The Fugate Family of Kentucky

Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy was born in 1975, nurses and doctors were shocked and confused when they saw Benjy. He came out a bright shade of crimson like most babies they have seen, but his skin was a dark blue color. Doctors were worried about this alien skin color that they called an ambulance to take the baby 116 miles away from his hometown outside of Hazard, Kentucky to the University of Kentucky Medical Center.

This begun two days of testing, but doctors didn't get any closer to understanding why Benjy's skin was blue. That was when the baby's grandmother spoke up and asked, "Have you ever heard of the blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek?"

This was when Benjy's father, Alva Stacy, told the doctors, "My grandmother, Luna, on my dad's side was a blue Fugate. It was real bad in her."

Benjy was the latest child who was born in a long line of Fugates, the blue people of Kentucky, the family lived in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky for the last 197 years.

Martin Fugate was the first Fugate born in the United States, he was a French orphan that settled in to Troublesome Creek in the hills of eastern Kentucky in 1820.

He married Elizabeth Smith, who was said to be as pale and white as the mountain laurel that blooms during spring around the creek hollows.

By some incalculable odds, the two possessed a recessive gene that led to four of their seven children being born with blue skin. There were no roads during this time in eastern Kentucky, the railroad wouldn't even reach that area of the state until the early 1910s.

As a result of this, many of the Fugates started to marry and have children with those in their own bloodline.

"It was hard to get out, so they intermarried," Said Dennis Stacy, who is an amateur genealogist, and a descendant of the Fugates, "I'm kin to myself."

Benjy is a descendant from a line of the family that began when Martin's son, Zachariah, married his mother's sister.

Due to this kind of genetic isolation, they continued to reproduce and pass on the "blue skin" gene.

Over the next hundred or so years, the Fugates lived in relative isolation and they were accepted by the others of Troublesome Creek.

"They looked like anybody else, 'cept they had the blue color," One resident said about the Fugates.

In the early 1960s, some members of the family had begun to resent their blue-colored skin. There skin marked them as different, but by that time, others had already started to associate their skin color with the family history of inbreeding.

Two of the Fugates approached Madison Cawein, a hematologist at University of Kentucky's medical clinic at the time, they were in search of a cure.

"They were really embarrassed about being blue," Madison Cawein recalled, "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."

Madison used research collected from studies of isolated Alaskan Eskimo populations, Madison was able to conclude that the Fugate family carried a rare gereditary blood disorder. This blood disorder causes excessive levels of methemoglobin in their blood.

Methemoglobin is a nonfunctional blue version of the healthy red hemoglobin protien that carries oxygen in your blood. In most Caucasians, the red hemoglobin of their blood shows through their skin, causing a pink tint.

However, for the Fugates, the excessive amount of blue methemoglobin in their blood turned their skin blue.

This disorder is the result of a recessive gene, and so it requires both parents of a child to have the recessive gene for the disorder to appear in their offspring. Without the Fugates being so isolated and inbred, the disorder would be incredibly rare in their bloodline.

Madison devised a cure for the disorder: more blue. The best chemical for activating the body's process of turning methemoglobin to hemoglobin is methylene blue dye. The Fugates he treated ingested the dye and within a few moments, the blue in their skin disappeared and their skin turned pink.

As long as they continued to ingest the pills, the blue people of Kentucky could live their lives normally.

Within a couple of months of his birth, Benjy's skin color started to change to the average color for a baby. And by the age of seven, he lost almost all of his blue coloring, this indicated that he likely only received a copy of the gene from one of his parents.

It was likely Benjy had the gene passed down to him from his father's grandmother, Luna.

"Luna was bluish all over. Her lips were dark as a bruise. She was as blue a woman as I ever saw," Said Carrie Lee Kilburn, a local nurse.

Today Benjy and most of the Fugate family descendants have lost their blue coloring, however, the tint still comes out in their skin when they are cold or are flushed with anger. In these specific moments, the legacy of the Blue Fugates of Kentucky lives on.