Originally Posted by
Limoles
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.
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