Family Ties
Move over, Andy Griffith. Each July, Chang and Eng Bunker take top billing as the most celebrated former residents of Mount Airy, North Carolina.
On the last full weekend of the month, as they have for more than 25 years, around a hundred descendants of the world’s best-known pair of conjoined twins come together for a family reunion. Whether or not you can trace your ancestry to the Bunkers, the public event offers a chance to eat fried chicken, renew acquaintances, and celebrate the lives of two extraordinary Americans—the “original Siamese twins.”
The brothers moved to northwestern North Carolina in 1839, seeking somewhere quiet to retire after a decade traveling the country to exhibit their conjoined bodies for all to see, poke, and ridicule. “They were attracted to this spot by the purity of the air, the salubrity of the climate, and the rich and beautiful mountain scenery,” claimed an 1850 biography. “Amid the silence and solitude of nature, they could enjoy that retirement and tranquillity which is so much desired by them. ... They would there be free from the scrutinizing gaze of the public eye.”
Joined at the chest by a band of flesh and cartilage, the twins were born in 1811 in Siam (Thailand). In 1829, an American sea captain brought them to the United States to capitalize on the country’s fascination with “freaks of nature.” The men cut their bonds to the captain in 1832, achieving great fame and fortune on their own. Ultimately, though, they needed a rest.
Legend holds that the invitation to North Carolina came from Wilkesboro physician James Calloway, who befriended the twins while visiting New York. Learning of their interests in hunting and fishing, Calloway knew just the place. In Wilkes County, the twins hunted and fished—and became U.S. citizens at a time when naturalization was legally limited to whites. They adopted the surname Bunker, a nod to a friend and business acquaintance in New York, and bought 150 acres near Traphill, a village nestled at the base of Stone Mountain, where they built a fine house.
In April 1843, the twins married two sisters, daughters of a local farmer, and ten months later their wives gave birth to girls born within six days of each other. Each family grew steadily; ultimately, Eng fathered eleven children, Chang ten. Two tracts exceeding 650 acres gave the families space for their own farms, located a mile-and-a-half apart on rolling countryside about four miles south of Mount Airy. They raised swine, sheep, and cattle and cultivated corn, oats, wheat, and sweet potatoes.
The brothers resumed performing around the country in the 1850s, but Mount Airy remained home for the rest of their lives. Despite their wealth, the Bunkers presented themselves as enterprising farmers who shingled roofs, chopped wood, and tilled soil. After working hard, they played hard. They were “among the keenest hunters, fowlers, and fishermen of their district,” one newspaper reported. “In fact, they lived as real country gentlemen, ready to drink a glass, or fight a round, as occasion required.”
Although the brothers portrayed themselves as self-sufficient farmers, in truth they relied on the labor of enslaved blacks, numbering 20 to 30. When Civil War came in 1861, each contributed a son to the Confederate cause, one of whom was wounded, the other taken prisoner.
The end of slavery stripped the brothers of most of their wealth, although they kept their land. In 1870, Chang suffered a stroke that largely confined the brothers to their farms. On a cold January morning in 1874, Chang died. “Then I am going,” Eng noted. A servant was sent to fetch a doctor; they had planned to surgically separate the twins when one died, an attempt to save the life of the other. But town proved too far from the farm, and Eng followed his brother after 2.5 hours. Eng spoke his last words to his wife: “May the Lord have mercy on my soul!”
Joseph A. Orser is the author of The Lives of Chang and Eng: Siam’s Twins in Nineteenth-Century America (UNC Press, $28).