Show original siamese twins lived normal lives the original siamese twins the famed chang and eng let P T barnum spread his tales that they were to be cut apart and were to go separate ways such publicity brought droves to the box office but chang and eng liked comfort as best they could get it with their uncomfortable union they knew something they knew for one thing that they could not live were they cut apart they had been examined by hundreds of physicians they also knew that the day one of them died the other would not live long no matter how robust his half was it was over years ago that chang and eng were brought to this country to become so famed that henceforth their name the siamese m ese twins was to be passed on to every 0 ther other similar union of birth chang and eng were 19 years old when captain coffin of the american sailing vessel sachem brought them to new york they were not siamese but three fourths chinese and one quarter malay divided by two he had sighted the boys at the amazing feat of swimming bought them from their mother and taught them english on the trip to this country they were intelligent boys who learned rapidly the pair was bound together by a ligature growing out of their breast bones the twins became a sensation drew big crowds and wages and adjusted themselves to living comfortably here chang and eng took the name of bunker when they became american citizens then they settled down in north carolina as slave owners met the fair daughters sally and addie yates of a farm family down the road and one day bought two wedding rings and four hearts beat as one however sally and addie wanted privacy or at least separate homes and the brothers took care of that by establishing two homes they alternated eng spending three days with sally and chang then spending three with addie of course their social life always was complicated by the problem of the extra man all in au all the siamese twins had 2141 children all of their offspring were normal and their descendants still live in north carolina kansas and oklahoma |