They Never Left Each Other's Side

Some descendants of Chang and Eng Bunker—the original "Siamese twins"—are profiled in the current issue of National Geographic. The brothers settled near Mount Airy, North Carolina, in 1839, married local sisters, and had 21 children between them ... so to speak. Their descendants now number around 1,500.

Open admiration for the twins was not always a given. The older generation preferred a tight-lipped approach. Jessie Bunker Bryant, the 70-year-old grande dame and the force behind the annual family reunion, tells of a Bunker bride who didn't know about her famous relatives until the night before her wedding. "Your fiancé may not want to go ahead with this," warned her mother after disclosing the family secret. Happily, the revelation charmed the groom-to-be. [p. 151]

The article explains that, after 14 contentious years of living under one roof, the brothers agreed to split their time between two homes—three days in one, then three days in the other.

I was curious about how this would be represented in census records. In 1860, Chang's family was listed immediately after Eng's, in the next dwelling (the occupation of each man given as "Siamese Twin"). In 1870, Eng was listed on page 313A of the Mount Airy census, his brother on page 324B. Since the enumerator was supposed to list "every person whose place of abode on the first day of June, 1870, was in this family," shouldn't one of the twins have been found living in his brother's home? Was there a special provision in the census-taking guidelines for conjoined twins living (again, so to speak) apart?

A Six-Legged Marriage

When writing a family history, one should always provide something more than names and dates. Take, for example, this WorldConnect entry for Josephine Myrtle (Corbin) Bicknell. Her approximate date of birth is given, and her marriage date, but nowhere does it mention that she was born with four legs.

According to The Human Marvels, Myrtle was born in 1868 with her dipygus twin sister attached down below.

The tiny body of her twin was only fully developed from the waist down and even then it was malformed – tiny and possessing only three toes on each foot. Myrtle was able to control the limbs of her sister but was unable to use them for walking and she herself had a difficult time getting around as she was born with a clubbed foot. Technically, the ‘Four-Legged Woman’ only had one good, usable leg.

Despite this infirmity, Myrtle married and had children. Here's where it gets genealogically interesting.

It seems that her twin sister was also fully sexually formed – thus Myrtle possessed two vaginas. She had four daughters and a son and it has been rumored that three of her children were born from one set of organs and two from the other. Whether this is true or not; it is medically possible. [Link, via Neatorama]

Medically possible, but genealogically problematic. Should she be called the birth mother of all five children? If not, should she called the surrogate mother of some? And was her husband a bigamist, an adulterer, or just a generous brother-in-law?

(More images of Myrtle may be seen here. C'mon, you know you wanna look.)

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]