Living in an isolated community, the Kentucky Fugate family were regularly inbreeding and kept an ultra rare blood disorder in the family – leaving them with startlingly blue skin
One family lived in such an isolated community inbreeding became common with horrifying consequences – their skin turned blue.
Since the 1800s, one rural Kentucky family called the Fugates were affected an ultra rare blood disorder which leaves the skin blue. The unusual condition was kept alive however through generations of interbreeding between their ancestors.
It all began with one man named Martin Fugate, who immigrated to the States from France around 1820, looking for a new life in Troublesome Creek, Kentucky. He was thought to have been born with blue skin and abandoned at an orphanage as a baby where his parents were horrified by his blue skin.
While doctors were unable to identify the condition at the time, it was a blood specialist in the 1960s who established that they were suffering from methemoglobinemia – a rare condition that produces an abnormally high amount of methemoglobin, a form of hemoglobin. The result is a very dark, blue-coloured blood that can be seen through the skin.