The Blue Fugates

The blue Fugates of Kentucky were a family like none other. Donning either pale white or blue skin, this Appalachian family stood out. 
Listen as we walk through the Fugate family line, dispelling untruths, and telling the whole story.   

Sources:

Painting of the Fugates 

Howstuffworks.com, DNAexplained.com, Historycollection.com, Blue People of Troublesome Creek,  Ancestral Findings, MCMSNJ.net , More DNA stuff

Transcript

Meet The Blue Fugates

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Hello, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Hello.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

I'm Sarah.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

I'm Cole.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

And you are listening to Borrowed Bones, a podcast about fucked up, interesting, and toxic families. Today.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Who are we talking about today?

SPEAKER_00 0:28

We are talking about the Blue Fugates of Kentucky.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Ooh.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

The Fugate family.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

I know a little bit about them.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Just because of Ooh, what do you know?

SPEAKER_01 0:38

I know they're the Blue Fugate family from West Virginia. Appalachia. Kentucky. Kentucky. Oh, you just said Kentucky.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Appalachia, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

You drank like two bottles of wine last night, so whatever. It'll be fun today.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Yeah. I just know they're blue people.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Yes. Yes, they are.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Really blue skinned.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Yes. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to do this one or not because I thought that it had been done to death, and I thought that everyone knew about this and it was pretty commonplace. Um, no, they don't. I realize not many. I mean, I think there is a large population that does know about them, but there's a lot of people that don't. Yeah. And also with my research, I discovered new information about them. So the story that I knew is actually a little wrong. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

So let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Yeah. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Mm-hmm. So the story goes that in 1820, Martin Fugate, an orphan from France, came to America. And he came over because the American government at the time was offering people free land if they settled it and farmed it. This, to me, I got confused. This is not the Homestead Act of 1862. I was like, this is already wrong.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Or during Civil War. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Um, and I thought maybe that was it. And I was like, well, we're already wrong here because 1820 is way too early for that. But anyway, I looked into that and the American government did do something with Appalachia area specifically around this time. So Martin Fugate came over from France as an orphan in 1820 to get the freelan. And he would end up in a hollow or a holler called Troublesome Creek.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Troublesome Creek Holler.

Myths About Martin And Origins

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Anyone who's not familiar in this area of our country, there's a lot of hollows or hollers. I don't know, little towns. Yes, yes, Hamlet Village. Yes, very small, rural, tight-knit communities, like isolated. Yeah. Isolated is the big one here. In this holler, there are four other families within Troublesome Creek. We have the Smiths, the Richies, the Stacy's, and the Combs. The Combses, I guess. Their last name is Combs. And Martin, Fugate, will marry Elizabeth Smith. So he starts his own little line, but it is connected to the Smith family that's already there. And they would go on to have seven children.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Martin and Liz.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Martin and Liz, yep. Four of those children would be blue.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Like they came out blue and never stopped, or they Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Mm-hmm. And now there's different theories on if Martin was blue himself or not. When researching it, I don't think he was blue.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Okay. Obviously, this is before photographs exist. There's no photograph of him.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

It's all a lot of their story is verbal, which is why it's a little messy and very or isolated holler. Yeah. Holler. So yes. So I don't know if Martin was blue or not. I am leaning towards no. So I I'm just assuming that these four blue babies were a surprise, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Oh, the first one anyway. Yeah two, three, or four might have been like not quite surprised.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

That's true. Now, this is where we already do get a little bit of the details mixed up here. Most people who know the story have heard all of this before. Everything I just said, Martin is an orphan. He came over in 1820 to get land from in the Appalachia area. In recent years, though, through like Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and people just doing their own digging, they discovered that the Fugates were actually in America since like the 1700s.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

He wasn't an orphan.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

He wasn't an orphan from France.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

I I think his family did come from France.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Fugate, I would assume. Yes. It sounds like a French name. Yes or a derivative of a French origin.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

But he was not the one that came from France.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

So he was American by birth.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Yes. And they just weren't always in Kentucky. And no one cross-referenced the the like paperwork. Everyone was like, well, the Fugates are here in Kentucky, in Perry County, but that's it. They didn't look from because they they moved from like West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, whatever. You're right. It wasn't. But um so the Fugates were around. There's a Fugate family's Facebook page, and I found that. And that's where I discovered that a lot of the descendants are like, there's little things wrong here. Martin was not an orphan, he had family here. So descendants of the Fugates, I'm here to correct that wrong. Martin Fugate, the one that moved to Kentucky, his second cousin, Zachariah, also moved and lived in Troublesome Creek, Kentucky. Okay. A lot of people miss that one. So they have two Fugate family lines starting. Now back to Martin and Elizabeth, who are married, having children now, the four blue babies, the rest are white. So what's happening here? Why are they having blue babies? Yeah. Why is this happening? Both Martin and Elizabeth carry a recessive hereditary gene that causes the blue skin.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

A mutation.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yes. And they both had it. They weren't. This is why I don't think Martin was blue. Because I don't think either of them were displaying it because you have to have both recessive traits.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Yeah, they would have not been surprised. Exactly. So right.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

And I just I'm not sure if Martin could marry someone in an isolated hauler if he was blue. Like I feel like, but who knows? But I mean it is isolated. So I don't know. Some people say he's blue. I just don't think he is given the genetics and the science of it all.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Either way, though, both Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith carry that recessive gene.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

And that's been established genetically.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yes. They it has to. Literally, there's no other way around it.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah, for about I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

It to create a blue child, they both have to have a recessive gene. I'm not a scientist, but we all get what I'm saying here. Okay, just so we're clear. I am not scientific at all.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Why blue? Why like are there other colors? We'll figure that out. Could there be green kids? Maybe.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

It depends. I'll we'll get there.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Could there be, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Well, some of these blue fugates were so dark that they looked purple. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you turn purple when you're cold. True. Yeah. As these first blue fugates were growing up, the family was even more isolated because no one liked the blue to be shunned as local freaks.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Right.

Life In Troublesome Creek’s Isolation

SPEAKER_00 7:26

And keep it in the circus. Yes. Yeah. And like I mean, the more isolated an area is, from my experience, anyway, if I guess I've not looked into studies, but from my experience, the more isolated an area, the more fearsome they are of something different. In a blue-skinned family, that's very different. Even with the bluegrass Kentucky all around, mm-mm. Not supposed to be skin.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

I've only seen one blue person in my life. It's it stands out.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

You've seen a blue person?

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Blue guy around our town. I don't know if he's alive anymore, but a few years ago. He was everyone, everyone knew about him.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Oh, I didn't know about him.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

I don't want to say names or anything, but like, oh yeah, the blue guy in town.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Did he eat colloidal silver, whatever it's called? Did he do the silver thing?

SPEAKER_01 8:11

He must have, yeah. He wasn't as blue as the fugits, but like you noticed him in a crowd. You were like, what the fuck's wrong with that guy? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

That's strange. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

He stood out.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Gosh. Yes. So Troublesome Creek itself as a hauler is very, very isolated. They didn't have roads for a long time. They didn't even start getting trains coming through that area until the early 1900s. The name Troublesome Creek is actually because it was such a trouble to access it.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

So it was named basically like it's hard to get here.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Geographical names back then weren't uh subtle. They were ex they were just descriptive.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Broke neck Creek. Why is it called that? Someone broke their neck there. That's why. Yeah. They're not literary. They're just descriptive.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Yep. This is where you're going. You're gonna have a hard time. Deal with it. Yeah. You know what you're walking into there. So because of this isolation, there was inbreeding in that area. Oh, overall. Inbreeding. Yes. Of course.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Life finds a way.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Yes. And this is another detail that a lot of the current descendants of these families get really frustrated about. They don't deny the inbreeding, but they say it wasn't as bad as the story says. And this is the specific detail that they talk about. So you'll see this a lot. And I had a hard time not seeing it, but there's one story that goes that Martin and Elizabeth had their children. One of them is named Zachariah. This is true. And he's blue. This is true. The story, though, this what I'm about to say is wrong, is that Zachariah married his aunt, Elizabeth's sister.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

And at first that's kind of believable because maybe Elizabeth is the top of the line of her family for siblings, and there could be a 15 to 20 year age gap between siblings.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

An aunt who's roughly the same age as the neighborhood. Zachariah.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Yes. That was not the case. When looking at like birth certificates, like there were a few birth certificates that were found, a few things that could factually be like this is really happening, or this really did happen. Um, Elizabeth's aunt that was said to have married her nephew was like 50 years older than him.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

So I was like, that that's there's no way that happened.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

There's no and there's no practical purpose. Purpose of it.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Like, why would you do that?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Childbearing age, why would a younger male like that? Why would that even happen? Why would that happen?

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah. And so after looking into it more, I discovered that the second cousin that moved with Martin Fuchs. Yeah, Zachariah. His name is Zachariah.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

There's two Zacharias.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Mm-hmm. There's two Zacharias.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

So that's the one that married.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Zachariah, the second cousin, married the sister of Elizabeth.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Okay. And they're not blood related, so there's no they're just legally related. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Yeah. So they weren't like in intensely inbred.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

There should be a little inbreeding at work.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

There is a little bit. Yeah. There is a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

I think you should leave.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Oh, there should be.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

You can't have inbreeding at the home. Okay. There should be a little inbreeding at the home.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

I forgot that part.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Well it's the, you know, we can't watch porn at work. We should be able to watch a little porn at work.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Oh. That's what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Oh, teaching inbreeding.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

I don't remember him talking about inbreeding. Which we have to watch a little porn.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

You can't watch porn at work. We should be able to watch a little porn at work.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

But yes, the Fugates don't dispute the inbreeding in general. They just say it wasn't like mother to son, father to daughter.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

It was like cousins and second cousins and Which honestly was common in just America. Well, rural America at the time.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Everywhere though, too, because this is around the same time. Think of Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore. He's trying to fuck his niece.

Stigma, Schoolhouse Cruelty, Survival

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah. I mean, like Jesse James married his first cousin, who was named after his mother.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

And it was just That's there wasn't even an issue at the time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

They were first cousins, which is imagine your wife being named after your mom.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

It's weird. But you know how you hear of all those I'm sidetracking here, but I just you hear of all those stories, and you I don't know, you're not from a big family. I am. I have a lot of first cousins. And growing up, there's always that weird, like, is my cousin hitting on me? You have like one cousin that's kind of like playing with that boundary, and you're like, is this a flirting? What the hell is going on here? And I've just heard that people with big families, there's always like one that kind of nothing like happens, but you it's like, is there flirting? Like what's happening here? You kind of yeah, no, none of that. No, but it yes, there's a reason there's that phrase, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:16

So I have a small family and my cousins are male.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Just never wasn't issues.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah. No, it's just you yeah, there's stories between big families and whatnot. And so I think that I honestly think that if it wasn't frowned upon today, there would be some people marrying their cousins today. I think they exist. Don't. That's not good health-wise. I think what you have to get to like your third cousin before the health risks are no longer a thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Well.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Or is it closer than we want?

SPEAKER_01 14:44

I mean, state by state in America varies on incest laws.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

I'm talking about health and science. I'm not talking about legal, okay? We can't I don't trust America. First cousins, I'm sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Past like if like the m the woman is past menopause. Like there's some that like first cousins can marry from like age like 60 and up or something.

unknown 15:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

They're like, why not? Like you can't who gives a shit? You're consenting adults and it's gross, but you can't do any like You're not creating like bad life out of it.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Anyway, yeah. That was a sidetrack. But yes, so just to clear the air there, though that those are the two main things. Sa Zachariah did not marry his aunt, and Martin Fugate was not an orphan. Okay. There's a lot of confusion because they reused names. They didn't use Junior, first, second, or third. It was just Zachariah, Zachariah, Martin, Martin, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, like all over the place. So it got confusing. Now, back to Martin and Elizabeth, the ones that are starting everything here in Kentucky. The news of their blue baby, their first one, spread through the holler very quickly. Before he was even a month old, everyone knew about him. The rest of the people in Troublesome Creek, they would say things like It's a demon. There was wickedness in their blood. When the Fugates did go to church, they were always apart from the crowd. There was like pews or rows that were empty all around them, like a bubble that was surrounding them, a barrier. Yes. And it's said that Martin began to change after his blue son was born. He would work more, he was outside working the land, hunting, and he grew quieter. Martin would be found sitting by candlelight often at the table, tracing the lines of the wood while just lost in thought.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Nice.

unknown 16:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Now each child that was blue were like different shades of blue, which I kind of think is neat. Teal. Yeah. Indigo. Some were dark blue, indigo. Cerulean. Ooh, the good one. Yes. Others just had like little tints of blue around their fingers, their lips. Oftentimes the kids, whenever they would get upset or agitated, the way that like you or I would turn red in the face, they would turn blue. And they their lips would turn very blue if they were cold. Like if they blushed, they were bluer. Instead of pink, they were blue. They were healthy though. Yeah, it's like there was nothing else wrong with them. They were healthy. They everything was fine. They just were blue. So because everyone had negative things to think about them, the fugates did not go out much. Basically, just church and then like the store whenever they whenever necessary.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

They weren't social.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

No. No. Elizabeth.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Weren't going to the local hootin' nanny.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Elizabeth would keep the kids close whenever she did go out. She would always hear whispers surrounding them. That was the blue boys.

unknown 17:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Many thought that it was like the devil's touch and that they were sinners being punished for something. When Elizabeth would go to the general store, she and her children would get stared at a lot, and the owner of the store would conduct business very quickly with her just to kind of like get her out.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Get those vampire. I would so if I was a blue kid, once I got of age, I would just lean into it. Oh I would totally go super villain on it. Just be like, I will be the monster. I'll be the boogeyman in this town if that's what you think I am.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Oh, yeah. Create the boogeyman type of thing. Like you created this.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

I'll show you a monster. Let's do this.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah. If you can't live down the reputation, might as well live up to it.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Oh, okay. I get it. I mean, I'm surprised no one did just do like a mass, like rah, but no, they just kind of stayed to themselves. They really did. And it said that kids would shout like blue devils, ghost folk, and cursed ones as they like passed by. Yeah, I know. I like that one. I I say it's said because I don't know for sure. Right. These are all stories. One time a neighbor came by and talked to Martin, and he said, you know, folks saw your kids playing and they started talking. And he the neighbor said that everyone was saying blue isn't right, it's unholy. The neighbor advised Martin at this time to keep his kids close to the house. No one likes your blue kids. They're unholy. Keep them hidden.

The Hunt For A Medical Answer

SPEAKER_01 19:18

If I'm gonna duck go on a tangent for a second, but like if supposedly the color blue is the last color that human eyes evolved to perceive in the last two thousand years or so, they allege. I don't know if that's true anymore.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

But uh Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Like historically there could have been more blue people that we just didn't perceive as blue.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Oh, I wonder. Like they would have at least been a different shade. Like it wouldn't just look white to someone, you know. So but yeah, that is interesting. And I did hear that a while ago about the blue development, but did they re-look into it or something?

SPEAKER_01 19:55

It was mostly based on conjecture that historical documents didn't reference the color blue. They described things that we would describe as blue today as other, like the Bible, the Odyssey, the Ilya. They like Homer described the sea as like wine colored. Anything that we would say is like blue, no one else historically described it as blue. Maybe the name years ago.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Maybe the name of the color didn't come about for a while. Maybe people saw it and didn't know how to describe it. That's still weird.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

But then even like isolated tribes can't differentiate blue from green easily. Like we like you know, uncontact or not uncontacted, but barely contacted tribes in South America or whatever. Like you when they show them shades of green and blue, they can't pick the blue square out of like 219 green.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Weird.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Back to it.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Anyway.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

All the best foods are blue.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Yeah. How about an egg in this drying time? Anyway. So after the neighbor advised Martin to keep his kid close, Martin looked at him expressionless and said, It's not the Lord's work. It is mine. It is in me. Every story that I hear or read about Martin is that he was pretty depressed and like blamed himself and felt bad.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Why do I have the devil semen in me?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

The fugates as a family would continue to withdraw even more, no longer lingering after church, even. And Elizabeth stopped going to the store altogether. And she often asked her children, like older kids, to go.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

The non-blue ones.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Probably, I'm guessing. Yeah. Yeah, it's mixed.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Played a few normies.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Yeah, yeah. I would really love to see a photo because Elizabeth is described as having very pale skin with like red hair.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

I've seen that painting of them like a family portrait. Some of them are blue and some are not. Yeah. Yep. I don't know the whole when that was if they like sat for a portrait or if it was just done decades later or whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

I will let you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Mm-hmm. But yes, so the isolation that they continue to stay in caused more inbreeding, and they would marry the other families in that hauler, like the Smiths, the Ritchie's, Combs. So descendants today could have those last names as well. But the difference is that other families in Troublesome Creek would venture out to other like haulers in the area. Like there were other little towns, other little hamlets around, but the Fugates didn't even go there. So even though the Smiths and Richie's and Combs's were kind of intermarrying as well, um, they didn't do it as much because they they some of their kids left, some of their kids moved away, but the fugates didn't. They were like, uh, nope.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

They just dug in.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yes, they couldn't leave. You know, m some of the uh uh white-colored fugates left, but the blue ones stayed. So that recessive gene just stayed. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Speaking of genes, and I saw that uh was it James Watson died yesterday or two days ago, one of the two Watson and Crick, one of the two discoverers of the DNA double helix. Oh died at 97.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

I didn't know he was still alive, honestly. I got the alert that he died.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Didn't know that we didn't know about the DNA double helix thing. I thought I didn't realize that was that recent of a discovery. Oh, okay, that makes a little more sense. He is 97. Yeah. I guess okay. I was like, I thought that happened a lot sooner. Okay, fair for fair.

unknown 23:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Yes. But yes, so the um fugates did not leave troublesome Creek. And as we know, the Smith family as well does have that recessive gene in them. I did see in one place, which I don't think this is true, but I did see in one place that the Combs family also had that recessive trait.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

I that'd be so what, six, five, six families, half of them have this right.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

So I think that that's a really rare I think the Smith family for sure, because we have evidence, yeah, right, they had children. Yeah, that's um and the combs family would eventually have blue children. The Smith family, the richest. It's from intermarrying, though.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

If you get some not inherently.

Methylene Blue And A Turning Point

SPEAKER_00 24:13

So I just wanted to say that again because there's a lot of hearsay, this and that.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Hearsay this.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

As time went on, more blue people were being born. Other haulers in the area would start to hear stories about them. They basically looked at the blue people of Kentucky as like a myth.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Yeah. The bluegets.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Yeah, the bluegets. Ghost tales were told about them. It was said to touch a fugate's hand was to feel the chill of death itself. Yeah, they're like a spooky. Yeah.

unknown 24:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

See, I would start living up to this if I was one of those boys, like I was in my teens.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Yeah, kind of like, ooh, like creep, like look in the windows. And yeah. Just be yourself. One time there was a new fancy teacher all the way from Lexington, Kentucky. Now we're moving city. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

We're getting like the 1850s.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Yeah, we're moving through time here. Yes. I don't know all the dates, but we're we're progressing through time. More kids are being born. Just assume procreating is happening. And a fancy teacher came all the way from Lexington.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

I'm surprised none of the locals tried to like enslave these blue people for being darker than them. Kentucky was a slave state. Surprised they weren't like, hey, their skin's darker. Yeah. With some chains on them.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

I know. I think because of the isolation part of it too, worked in their favor as well. Because the families didn't have a choice, right? We need at the very least, even if we don't want to marry into your family, we need your help in times of hardship. And like the community has to come together because no one's helping them. It's tricky. It's tricky. They they were pretty much shunned, but allowed to be there. Yeah. So the teacher from Lexington, Kentucky came to teach in Troublesome Creek. There was a one-room schoolhouse. I think they met like once a week. Like it wasn't much, just enough to be like we did it.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Everyone from age seven to seventeen, probably in one room.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

If that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Um, and the teacher didn't know about the blue Fugates, and he was surprised to see one blue student in his classroom. Yes. I read that it was a male teacher. That's what I read.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Nice for some reason I pictured a female teacher coming.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Yeah, no, I I read it was a male. Um one of the Fugate boys was there, of course, the blue student eagerly waiting to learn. However, the children openly laughed at the Fugate boy and started chanting Blue Devil at him. And I saw in the account that the teacher was not able to gain control of the class, but also that he didn't really try. He was also asking questions, like, Why are you blue? What is this? Like he wanted the kids to stop yelling blue devil, I think, but also was like, You're blue, hey. So that boy never returned to class again.

unknown 26:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

None of the fugates really went to school. A few tried, there's a few stories of this of one trying here and there, but they get just like pushed out. So they just don't go to school. It's also said the kids would ask their mothers throughout the family why they are the way they are. And the mothers would always respond, God. You are the way God made you, pay no mind to what others say.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Take it up with God. He cursed you, not me.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Yeah. The fathers would give advice to their sons, telling them to keep their heads down, don't talk unless you have to, work hard, and just keep busy. So they basically taught everyone in their family to just work through it. Mind your business, work through it, keep your head down, and just live within our home here. Railroads finally came in the early 1900s, around 1910, 1912, and they made their way into the haulers. Yay! This is when news of the blue people started to make their way out of the region. We have more, obviously, people traveling around. We're jumping forward here. Yeah. There's not a lot of information because there's not a lot of written things. Yeah. Even in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, like even in Appalachia now, there's a lot of areas that are untouched and people live there.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

We discover families all the time. Anyway, moving on. So yeah, we're fast-forwarding to like the mid-20th century now, um, 1950, early 1960. And there's a physician at the University of Kentucky.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Yes, he's he takes it up named Dr.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Madison Cowen. He is a hematologist, which is a blood doctor. And he hears of this blue fugate family, and he's like, whoa, I have a theory.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

I know what the cause might be.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

He wants to see them. He wants to check it out. So in 1960, Dr. Kowen, um, Cowan, sorry, made his way to Troublesome Creek. He hung around for a while and was visiting clinics because he didn't know exactly where they lived.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Yeah, you gotta kind of like get in there and find the right people who will tell you which road to go down to find them. Because it's very hush-hush of him.

unknown 29:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

And I want to be be clear after I said it, I heard how I said it. He didn't know even to go to Troublesome Creek. He made his way toward that area. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

He just knew there's blue people in the wilds of rural Kentucky.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Yes. So he's hanging around the area, visiting clinics and doctors' offices, being like someone at some point had to have needed medical attention, right? Somewhere along the line, a blue person had to have walked in somewhere. So he's asking around, asking around, and finally he meets nurse Ruth Pendergrass. Ruth said that a woman showed up at the doctor's office once and that she knocked on the back door, not wanting to come in through the front lobby. So Ruth lets her in and was like, What's up? And the woman looked like she was trying to hide herself. And the woman asked for a routine blood test. Okay. And Ruth remembered that it was very cold outside that day. And she noticed that the woman's lips and fingers were very blue. So I don't think she was a fully blue person, but she had that blue tint to her. Ruth was concerned as a nurse, like blue isn't really a good color if you're healthy, right? And the woman quickly explained that the blue skin condition ran in her family and that she was fine. Ruth knew that her last name was Combs.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

So she's from the Combs.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

She married married into that.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Her maiden name is Fugate.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Dr. Cowen located the Combs family, and they were living not in Troublesome Creek, but near it. And they told him that the Fugates lived in Troublesome Creek. He still doesn't know exactly where that is, but they pointed him in a closer direction. As he was on his way, looking around, trudging through the woods. I don't know if this is a true story or not, but I like to think of this as a true one.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

It's true that it is a story.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

That is that is right. That is correct. Dr. Cowan, I guess, when he was just trudging through the woods, looking to see if he spots any blue people, he did see some and he yells at them to stop, and then he began running toward them.

unknown 31:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Come back here, blue bow.

unknown 31:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

That's exactly what I imagined. And then the story goes that the blue people ran away and he never got to interact with them because he was like shouting at them. Oh, so Dr. Cowan wandered around the woods a bit more, but he could not find where they lived. He lost them. So he decided to stick around Troublesome Creek, hoping again that someone else would need medical attention. He's like, someone came once, someone else might come back. Again, because Ruth, Nurse Ruth had a good interaction with that Fugate woman. Um, so they were hoping that maybe someone else would come back.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Combs woman.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Yes. Yes. I don't know her first name, though, but yes. Eventually, Ruth was visited again by two siblings.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

Yes, boy and a girl, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Patrick and Rachel Richie. So they last name is Richie, but still fugates. Yes. And they came to see the nurse. I don't really know why, but one way or another, nurse Ruth and Dr. Cowan were able to convince the siblings to let the doctor take some blood samples. And he noticed that their blood was darker, like a brown color.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

In some descriptions, I heard that it was like thicker.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

Alright.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

So I don't I don't know. Again, not a doctor. But he noticed it was brown. Another thing I saw was that someone described it as like chocolate milk. But yes. So he was running some tests and he was stumped. He didn't know what was going on. Well he dove into his research and he discovered that another doctor encountered blue people in an isolated area in Alaska.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Alaska? While it's cold there.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Yeah. These were indigenous people.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Oh. Yes. Like Inuits.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

And they were blue. Huh. I don't know what came of them, but this doctor discovered why they were blue.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

It's an oxygen issue in the blood, right?

Last Blue Births And Press Intrusion

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Yes. They were a different color because they were missing an enzyme, and this enzyme allows the blood to be oxygenated properly. Okay. But without it, it's not oxygenated properly, so it makes the blood a brown color, which then makes the skin look kind of blue.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

We have red blood in our skin, in our skin, in our bodies, so my white pale skin has a rosy glow because there's red underneath. If I had blue underneath, I would you'd probably see blue or brown or something. You know, there's some type. Yeah. We know what's happening here. Dr. Cowan goes back to the blood samples and he tests them for this enzyme. And sure enough, the fugates were missing the enzyme.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

So that's the actual recessive trait.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Yes, missing that enzyme.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Being blue itself is the effect.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

But yeah, the cause is the enzyme. Or the trait is the same.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

I didn't want to give too much science up top. I want to get the story out first. Um but yes, the missing enzyme is the trait. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

It's not even a pigment issue. No. It's a blood thing.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Yeah. And that's why everything else was like fine, because it was just they were missing a little bit of oxygen in their blood, but everything seemed to work okay. It's actually said that they are very healthy. Like they live easily into their 70s, 80s, and 90s. Yeah, they're like a strong family. Yeah. So Dr. Cowan, now knowing what is wrong, starts playing with different chemicals to see like how to make this blood more oxygenated. Yes. And he uses a substance called methylene blue. And this blue chemical would allow the blood to turn to red by carrying oxygen to the blood that it was missing. So I think it's kind of ironic that a blue chemical will make them pink or white.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

But yeah. So Patrick and Rachel allow Dr. Cowan to inject them with this methylene blue.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

And these two are like teenagers at the time, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:17

I don't know exactly.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

They're like not full adults. They're like in the children to teen. I don't think they're full adults.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

I have no idea. They're brother and sister, so I'm guessing they're probably teen or young adults, but I I really did not look. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Seeing this on uh what was that show? Mysteries at the Museum. Remember that?

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

With host Don Wildman.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

He's always walking on like a staircase. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

He was like a cool leather jacket. Yeah. And he had the coolest name, Don Wildman.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Oh, yeah. But yes. So the blue methylene, after it was injected into Patrick and Rachel, it worked. Yeah, true. Within a few minutes, actually. I didn't know. I thought it would take a few days, but no.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

Like see the blue immediately dissipating. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Within a few minutes, they were starting to turn a pale pink skin tone.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

The effects were only temporary because you'd like to pee it out basically.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

You had to get like normal or regular injections to maintain your color.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Dr. Cowan made tablets.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Oh, tablets. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

He gave them to them, sent them home with them, gave them extra. Like, here you go, this will help. Take it whenever you need it. There you go. Now, one day, an older mountain man of the Fugate line came up to Dr. Cowan. I don't know how long after, but after, and he said, I can see the old blue running out of my skin in a grateful tone. Like, that's the only, that's all I know about that story. But Dr. Cowan was happy. He had their trust and he was like, Cool, okay. So now that he's gained their trust, they know that he's like a good guy, he was able to ask them more questions.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

He wanted their lineage and yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

He wanted to know the journey of this recessive trait. Where did it start? Who started it? Where did it come from?

SPEAKER_01 37:57

He was the first blue person that you recall in your family tree kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Yes. So he took down a bunch of verbal accounts. And he also, I saw in one place that he spoke to like 180 family members. Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

Sorry.

Debunking Inbreeding And Lasting Legacy

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Mm-hmm. Well, he's talking to Richie's, he's talking to Smiths, like family members meaning like the sprawling. Yes, all of it.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

The sprawl of Troublesome Creek.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Yes. He also looks a little bit into official records of Perry County, Kentucky, which is the county that Troublesome Creek is in. Okay. So he looks to find maybe some birth certificates, some marriage licenses, anything like that, just to kind of help dates line up. Um he doesn't go outside of Perry County, though. He doesn't look outside of that.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

So you gotta set a limit.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

For him, the origin of the Blue Fugates is Kentucky. And that's where we get Martin being an orphan in 1820.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Because he just shows up.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Yep. And that was pretty common even in the 50s and 60s. If someone didn't really know where they came from, the person would just say they're orphaned. But it wasn't like a a a trick or anything. It wasn't like back then, if someone were to be like, oh, actually he's not an orphan, this is what's going on, no one would be like, You lied to us, Dr. Cowan. It would be like, well, okay. And it solves that. Yeah. So he wasn't an orphan. I think it was just the term used at the time because, like you said, he has set limits. He can't travel the whole country looking for where Martin came from. Dr. Cowan was also confused by the two Zachariah Fugates. He never mentioned that Martin and Zachariah both were adults living there together. He started the Fugate line with just Martin. Okay. And then Zachariah, his son, married Ant.

unknown 39:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

When Dr.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Cowan started this.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

Okay. So he got his genealogy incorrect. And it just got repeated throughout the years.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

Again, I don't think he, you know, he didn't mean to. I think he's a scientist. I think he would like to know the actual genealogy of it all, but through verbal accounts and what little official records he had, and maybe a Bible here or there that was passed down from the family might have some family notes in it, but that's it. So he's taking very fragmented pieces and trying to create a whole story. So he fills in blanks. Dr. Cowan published his findings or his case in 1964. And right after it was published, or soon after, journalists began to request interviews with Hilda Stacy. They request interviews for other people too. Um Stacy is another last name of their Stacy's, Richie's, Colin Smith's. Yeah. So she's she's a Fugate lying. Okay. Last name of Stacy, though. Her maiden name is Fugate. Um, but she said that she didn't like the way the journalists and reporters were just rude to her, asking very personal and judgmental questions about how their family was intermarrying, and she's really didn't like how much they were focused on that. So this is where it all starts with like the press now knowing about it, and they're like yes, sensationalizing it, making the big deal. And Hilda Stacy is just recorded as being the one that says we don't like that. Yeah. The last descendant to be born with blue skin was Benjamin Stacy.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

And when was he born?

SPEAKER_00 41:16

1975.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Okay. I thought it was in the 70s or 80s that the last one was born blue.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

Yep. He's also known as Benji Stacy, if you see that name. Same one. Uh I believe he's still alive today.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

He'd only be 50. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

I didn't see any death records or anything. And, you know, he's living peacefully, I'm sure. But yes, he was the last descendant that was born with blue skin. He was born in Lexington, Kentucky. Okay. And he's Hilda Stacy's son. Did I say that already? Whatever.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Just yeah, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

I'll edit it out.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

All right, let's just admit it. That didn't happen.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

Doctors were very shocked when this blue baby was born. Yeah. And they were trying to figure out what was wrong, but Benji's grandmother stepped in and was like, eh, this is we're from the Fuguet line. Uh who runs in the family. That's who we are.

SPEAKER_02 42:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

But Ben only had one recessive gene for it. Okay. So within a few weeks or a month or so, he grew out of it.

SPEAKER_02 42:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

And I guess this did happen to a lot of the Fugate lines when they did have a recessive gene, just one. They could be born blue and then they grow out of it. Yeah. Yeah. It just works out. I'm going to move forward now with the sensationalization of that was fun to say. Sensationalization of the Fugate family, because the press is now on it. Several family members were interviewed in a medical book called Traits and Fates. And they all basically, they're trying to tell their story, their side of it. And they just said we all eventually came to accept the color of our skin. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

What else?

SPEAKER_00 42:45

And it was just normal to them now. And Ben's mom, Hilda, Stacy, she just shrugged it off and said, It's common. It's nothing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

What do you do?

SPEAKER_00 42:52

So they're trying to like tone it down. They're like, can we just chill out? It's not a big deal, guys. Leave us alone.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

Health other in any other way. So it's not a big deal. It's just not.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

It's not a big deal. So now we're gonna jump into the 1980s now.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

All right.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

Dr. Cowan was approached by a show called That's Incredible.

SPEAKER_02 43:16

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:17

And they wanted to parade the blue people across the screen in their weekly display of human oddities. It's kind of how Dr. Cowan looked at it. He did say no. He refused. He didn't want to be a part of the show. And the show was only on from 1980 to 1984.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

So I didn't realize that. Um, but yes, it's basically if you don't know it, very human oddities being shoved in front of your face and you get to ogle at it.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

It's a televised sideshow.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:46

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 43:47

Barnaban Bailey for this era.

Painting, Folklore, And Setting The Record Straight

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Yeah. Dr. Cowan wasn't still like studying any like their blood or anything because he figured it out, right? But he still kept in good contact with not in good was some of them still reached out to him time to time when needing help. Like there was one instance where um I think one of the sons of someone, a blue fugate line, he had a baby and he had he was in the military, so he was out of the country, and his baby was born blue, and he called Dr. Cowan, like, what can I do? And Dr. Cowan was like, just have that baby, you know, give him the injection and call it good. Like, but they're still calling him years later, which I think was great. So they have a good bond. Dr. Cowan didn't mean to like mess up their family and lineage, he was really trying to help. Yeah. There was also, which this was fun to hear, a Hollywood film or a documentary crew that was trying to film them and do stuff with them in Troublesome Creek, but they were chased away. Apparently, each house they went to had large guard dogs that would chase them out.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

So yeah, they're like, we're done. We don't care about you anymore, we're done.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Nurse Ruth would go on to say that the blue fugates, they were poor people, but they were good. So to know them is to love them. You just have to know them. Now let's talk about that painting.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Because I was curious about that too, because I always thought that that was a representation of them. It's not. Surprise. Let's talk about it. So as we know, the Fugate family stayed away from photography. They probably didn't care about it much anyway, because it was expensive back then. And you know, but either way, they just didn't want it. Like they didn't want to be seen, they didn't want their photos taken ever because they were scared that someone's going to take their photo out of Troublesome Creek and then show them to the world.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

I think the first photo was taken in 1837. But for the first I mean, I I don't know when the first color photo was taken, but I imagine the first I mean the first 60, 70 years of photography.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Not very well, but it wasn't like straight black and white, though, was it that sepia tone? So that their skin would have looked different.

SPEAKER_02 45:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

It would have looked different. Yeah. Either way, they they were private, right? They didn't want anyone knowing that they existed. They didn't want the outside world to know of them. Even as photography became more and more like in the 50s and 60s, there's just not a lot of photos of them because they were blue. They didn't want their photographs taken, or they just never became public, right? So the artist of this painting, he was asked to do the painting of the Fugate family, the first, the Martin and Elizabeth, for a 1982 article. So this painting is far more recent. Yes. And the article was written for science for Science magazine called Science 82. Okay. It changes its year every year. So it's Science 83.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

Some journal problem. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

The artist was told the number of people in the family, the number of children, and all that, but said rural Kentucky family given like a rough time period. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

So he looked up like photos of people from back then and just kind of made his own idea of it. So we have no idea how they really looked. We've I he could have just done any f any photo of anyone and just done it. And he was also told to paint five of them blue, Martin being the fifth.

SPEAKER_01 47:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

I think this painting is why so many people think Martin Fugate was blue.

SPEAKER_01 47:17

Probably.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

I don't think he was. I just don't. And I think that's why Dr. Cowan probably stopped at Martin and Elizabeth because I don't think either of them were blue. Yeah. I think he goes, okay, it started with them. Done. I just that's what I think. That's what I'm assuming from my research. So yes, I understand the frustration of the descendants because there's a lot of big details that are just wrong. However, I understand why they're wrong though, too. Like I'm not mad about it. Like no one's trying to mess up this story. It just kind of got sensationalized. And so there's not as much intermarrying as you would think. That's what that's the takeaway, I think, from all of this.

SPEAKER_01 47:56

They're not it's not they're not blue because of inbreeding.

SPEAKER_00 48:00

No. Yeah. No. Yeah. Because the Smith family did have it. So like even there there was going to be blue people no matter what. Even like the first blue ones were not connected in blood at all. So yeah. That's it. No. Yeah, there wasn't too much.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

I mean, there are people who can become blue today by taking too much colloidal silver.

SPEAKER_00 48:20

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just don't do that. That's not good for you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:24

So if you see like blue people around you, that's likely the cause.

Wrap-Up And Ways To Support

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Yeah. Don't take collodials, what how are you? Colloidial silver. I I don't know what benefits it has. It seems like when someone starts it, it's bullshit woo-woo stuff. Stop it. Yeah. It's not healthy to turn your skin blue.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

That's what I'm thinking of, yeah. So she was God and she turned blue.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

Yeah, and she basically like mummified in the bed. God, it's insane.

SPEAKER_01 48:52

But yeah, some I wonder if the fugits probably not. I was gonna say, I wonder if they're related to Carol Ann Fugit, who was a killer. She's the youngest woman to ever be sentenced to life in prison in U.S. history. She was 14 when she was sentenced. What did she do? She was she's been released since. She was parled like in the 70s, and she lives in Michigan, last I heard, as a nurse. Or retired nurse. She in the 1950s. Oh, this is a famous case. 1950s. This is in Nebraska. Caroline Fugit, she was 14. Her 17, 18-year-old boyfriend, Charles Starkweather, who was like a James Dean wannabe.

SPEAKER_02 49:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:35

The two of them went on a road trip for like two, three weeks, killing a bunch of people.

SPEAKER_02 49:39

Oh, they're with her parents. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:42

They killed her parents and then went on a road trip wherever they stopped to get gas, they would just kill people. Charles Starkweather and Caroline Fugate. Spelled the same, but I doubt they're related because this was in Nebraska.

SPEAKER_00 49:54

Yeah, that seems very I don't know if they went that far west. But um maybe. I don't know. I'm sure some of them have flown the coop, right? They're not all in Kentucky.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

But that's an interesting is interesting. True crime case. Charles Starkweather.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

Yeah, there was um there were some theories of the blue fugates of like the silver. Maybe they're just taking a lot of that, but that's not true. There's something else they could be eating that has a lot of stuff in it, but that's not true.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

Um blueberries.

SPEAKER_00 50:19

Yeah, a bunch of blueberries.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

Drinking too much blue Gatorade.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

Yeah, blue Gatorade, blueberries. Um, some people even thought that maybe their skin was too close or their their blood was too close to their skin. Which I don't know why that would make it blue. Oh, because you see your blue veins. Maybe people thought because there was people did think back in the day your blood was blue. Like not scientists, because they drew blood, so they saw it, but like anyway, you know what I'm saying. Yeah. So no, none of that enzyme is missing. Yeah. So they didn't do it to themselves. Yeah. So yes, I hope you enjoyed the blue fugates. That was interesting. Yeah.

unknown 50:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:59

So you can spread the good word, let people know that they are not uh uh intermarried as much as others. They see I mean, honestly, you should all go on Facebook and visit that that page. It's public, it's open.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

They they want what's it called again?

SPEAKER_00 51:15

The f what is it called? I have it written down.

SPEAKER_01 51:18

I know you mentioned earlier, but if you're gonna plug it again, I know it's the Fugates like families.

SPEAKER_00 51:25

Yeah, the Fugates Fugate families.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

Of Facebook.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

Yeah. No, I mean it's not of Facebook. Oh, so they don't have that in the title. But yes, a lot of them are posting their own DNA stuff that they have found, and they see, I mean, I think there was some of their family that fought in the Revolutionary War. Like the Fugates came here before America was America. So yeah, spread the word and also share this episode. You can, oh, there we go. It's a good segue. You can help spread the word by sharing this episode because that also helps us. So remember to like us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts, wherever you listen. Sharing, engaging is very helpful. We give you consent to share us with your friends. Um, also follow us on Instagram at borrowed bones podcast. You can check out our merch site. You can always click just the link that's under the show description. So just scroll down just a little bit and you'll see a big merch. Also, our merch website is borrowedbones podcast.com. So take a look at everything and yeah. Yeah. Until next time.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Until next time, yes. Yes. The next time we use it. Goodbye.