The Blue Fugates of Kentucky had an extremely rare skin condition called methemoglobinemia, which literally turned their skin blue. Apparently the arrival of coal mining in Kentucky in 1912 led to the Fugates moving away from Troublesome Creek. There is no official record documenting that Martin was actually blue, but he and his wife both carried a recessive gene that gave their son Zachariah Fugate a startling blue color. The blue people of Troublesome Creek had methemoglobinemia, a metabolic condition affecting hemoglobin, the four-part protein that carries oxygen bound to an iron atom at each subunit’s core. The most detailed account, "Blue People of Troublesome Creek," was published in 1982 by the University of Indiana's Cathy Trost. He published his research on the family in 1964 in the Archives of Internal Medicine and talked about how he tried to treat the family’s condition using methylene blue. The ancestral line began with a French orphan, Martin Fugate… Thereby causing the blue people begin to disappearing. He made frequent trips to Hazard in the hope of finding some blue people. Stemming from French immigrant Martin Fugate, who moved to Kentucky in 1820, the blue people were to become legends in their own right. They eventually passed their unique characteristic from generation to generation, remaining largely isolated from the outside world. If a good friend of usually normal… Some reports say Martin was not blue but was a carrier of the methemoglobinemia gene. For almost two centuries, the “blue skinned people of the Fugate family” lived in the areas of Troublesome Creek and Ball Creek in the hills of eastern Kentucky. The family who continued to live in that area or around Troublesome Creek and Ball Creek came under Cawein’s radar. The progenitor of the Fugates family was a Frenchman by the name, Martin Fugate, who had traveled to America in 1820 in search of a better life. Image: via NClark Illustration of Martin Fugate and his family. The Blue People of Kentucky Read more about the Blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek (It’s a must read!). This condition is a rare blood disorder that occurs when there are excessive amounts of methemoglobin in the blood. Fugate, an orphan, settled down on a piece of land that had been left for him near Troublesome Creek … Due to a recessive gene, some members of the Fugate family have a bluish tint to their skin. The Fugate family of the Troublesome Creek region of Kentucky is but one example of a genetic disorder, scientifically known as Methemoglobinemia. 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