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Chang and Eng Bunker

The original Siamese Twins

Eng was on the right and Chang was on the left.

Although their mother-in-law weighed more than 500 pounds, they did not meet in a circus sideshow.

This lady was about five feet seven inches in height and nearly nine feet in circumference. Her accurate weight was never ascertained for the reason that there were in that neighborhood no adequate means of weighing her. Several contrivances were resorted to ascertain her weight, but the nearest approach to success was by using two pairs of steelyards drawing together four hundred and fifty pounds which being firmly secured a sort of swinging platform was attached thereto. Then this good woman stepped upon the platform both beams flew up; but the gentleman engaged in the enterprise estimated that her weight could not have been less than five hundred pounds. She was unquestionably the largest woman in this state, perhaps in America. Long after the time we have been speaking of, she died of obesity. When her coffin was taken from the undertakers it could not be gotten into the house until an opening was made for it.

They fought in the Civil War, for the South naturally.

Chang became an alcoholic in their later years, and the brothers fought bitterly.

Timeline

11 May 1811 Xiphopagus twins Eng and Chang born to parents Ti-eye and Nok in Mae-Klong, Siam (modern-day Thailand).
16 Aug 1829 Chang and Eng arrive in the United States and begin touring, managed by Boston sea captain Abel Coffin.
1832 Chang and Eng fire Coffin and later hook up with P.T. Barnum.
1839 Chang and Eng purchase 1,000 acres in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. There they establish a tobacco plantation, complete with 33 slaves.
15 Apr 1843 Chang and Eng wed the Yates sisters; Chang marries Adelaide and Eng marries Sarah Ann (Sallie).
1868-1870 European tour.
7 Aug 1870 While playing checkers with the President of Liberia during a transatlantic voyage, Chang is suddenly striken with paralysis along the right side of his body.
17 Jan 1874 Chang dies of a blood clot in the brain; Eng dies two and a half hours later, perhaps from fright.
27 Jul 2001 Officials dedicate the Eng and Chang Bunker Memorial Bridge in Surry County, North Carolina. Actually, it was a pair of bridges.

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