25 
“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” Jane Austen declared in her classic opening of Pride and Prejudice (1813), “that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”1 What the astute observer of the cloistered life of British landed gentry at the end of the eighteenth century could not have imagined was the possible complication involving the status of “a single man.” What if the single man were physically tied to another, as in the case of the Siamese Twins? Would the universal truth still be universal?
It would be decidedly unfair for us to disparage Austen for her lack of imagination or foresight. In 1843, when the news surfaced about the double wedding of Chang and Eng to two white sisters in a remote corner of North Carolina, most Americans were surprised, shocked, stunned, disgusted, or simply incredulous. MARRIAGE EXTRAORDINARY, screamed the headline in the Carolina Watchman. “Ought not the wives of the Siamese Twins to be indicted for marrying a quadruped?” asked the Louisville (Kentucky) Journal. William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator, touting abolitionist and highly religious agendas, condemned the union as “bestial.” The Greensborough (North Carolina) Patriot resorted to a bare-bones notice of the fact and a disdainful aside, “Comment is useless.”2 Nonetheless, everyone was asking, “How did it happen?” To answer that question, we need not only heed the wisdom of Austen’s seemingly universal truth but also examine Chang and Eng’s real-life situation against the larger canvas of American culture as it entered the straitlaced, chastity-belted Victorian Age.
Since their arrival in North Carolina in June 1839, Chang and Eng, having been accepted as honorary whites in the Southern hierarchy of races, were two reasonably happy “lords” busy running their general store, raising corn and hogs, and traveling constantly to Wilkesboro and the surrounding area for business or pleasure. About eight miles northwest of the county seat was Mulberry Creek, a valley that grew out of a natural pass through the Blue Ridge, cut by a steep and twisting road that presented broad vistas. Traveling in this direction, the twins often stopped by the residence of David Yates, a rich planter with six children, seven slaves, and an estate that grew to a thousand acres. In his biography of the twins, Judge Jesse Graves described the Yates domicile as a large house standing upon a high hill, painted in white, surrounded by orchards and slave cabins, which gave the place “an aristocratic aspect.”3 Alston Yates, David’s oldest son, was a frequent customer at the twins’ store, having purchased such items as linens, ladles, axes, locks, hinges, coats, shirts, pantaloons, dried fruits, tables, tubs, buckets, and even a book on constellations. Occasionally, the twins would “borrow” a slave from David Yates to work on their land. Since state laws did not allow slaves to hire themselves out for extra work, the twins would have to pay Yates the wages. Their relationship became even closer when, in November 1840, the oldest Yates daughter, Letha, married Samuel Baugus, brother of Charles Harris’s wife, Fanny. In this remote mountainous region, blood is certainly thicker than water. “So in their frequent visits to and from town,” as Graves put it, “Chang and Eng fell into the habit of stopping at Esq. Yates for dinner, or in the evening to stay all night and chat with the old gentleman and the old lady.”4
As the friendship grew, the twins turned their not-inconsiderable attention to the two younger Yates daughters, Sarah and Adelaide, who had reached the prime age of (as was said then) maidenhood at eighteen and seventeen, respectively. Not regarded as classic beauties, the two girls, nurtured by the mountain climate, were vivacious, imaginative, and, in nineteenth-century parlance, exuberant like wildflowers. Simpler in personality and plumper in body than her younger sister, Sarah had “rich, auburn hair, fine teeth, and hazel eyes.” Adelaide was a tall, slender brunette with “a free and open countenance.”5
The twins had first met these girls at the wedding of either Charles Harris and Fanny Baugus or Samuel Baugus and Letha Yates. Either way, the attraction was immediate. Their initial lively tête-à-tête was described by Shepherd Dugger:
Eng said [to the girls], “My brother wants to marry; and if any young lady here will have him, we will have a wedding today.”
“It is he who wants to marry,” said Chang, “and he is putting it off on me just to raise a conversation with you about love. He’d marry at the drop of a hat, and drop it himself, if he could get the ugliest girl in town to say ‘yes.’ ”
“The reason I don’t marry,” said Eng, “is because I’m fast to him.”
“The reason I don’t marry,” said Chang, “is because I’m fast to him. Isn’t it a pity that neither of two brothers can marry, because he is fast to the other?”
“Indeed it is,” said Sarah, “is there no chance for you to be separated?”
“The doctors say not,” said Eng, “and each of us decided that we would rather look on pretty girls, with a lean and hungry love-look, and continue to want a wife than to be in our graves.”
“What a pity,” said Adelaide, “that you who love ladies so dearly can’t marry, and that two young ladies can’t have such lovely husbands as you would have been.”
“Good-bye,” said the girls. “Good-bye,” said Chang.
Eng said, “Good-bye, my brother will be back to see you some day.”
“If I come back,” said Chang, “I will leave him behind, because he always monopolizes the conversation of the girl I love best.”
Eng said, “To show that I want to be fair, I will let him take choice of you girls now, and if we get back, the other shall be no less a choice to me.”
Chang chose Adelaide, and they parted joking as the young ladies left.6
Even though Dugger claimed to have known the twins and interviewed their descendants for details about their lives, the above conversation might have been imaginary, judging by the numerous factual errors Dugger made in his book. But it certainly captures the dynamics between the twins, the kind of Click-and-Clack Tappet Brothers humor (“Don’t drive like my brother”), a comic routine Chang and Eng had practiced to perfection in their decade-long performance.
A more reliable account of how the romance began is supplied by Judge Graves, who had befriended the twins for many years. Graves claimed that the twins had first met the Yates girls at Charles Harris’s wedding, when guests came from miles away to enjoy the banquet and celebration in Traphill. The next morning, when everyone was leaving, “Chang observed that a rather handsome young fellow dashed up by the side of Miss Adelaide as she cantered off on the prancing bay; and Eng saw that a rather good looking young Methodist preacher, named Colson, rode more soberly along by the side of Miss Sally [i.e., Sarah]. If any emotion of interest stirred the breast of any of the parties at that time it is one of the unrevealed secrets.”7
It was at this point that the twins began to make what one might describe as more frequent “rutting trips” to the Yates house in Mulberry Creek. As they became more familiar with the Yateses, Graves wrote, “they often devoted much of their time to the young ladies, whom they entertained most agreeably with accounts of their adventures and the amusing scenes they had witnessed—interspersed with very soft, sweet notes on their flutes—melody very greatly admired by the girls who had never heard such instruments before.”8 Like Odysseus returning from his epic journey, these two seasoned globetrotters, who had honed their interpersonal skills in front of millions of faceless strangers, undoubtedly were fascinating interlocutors to the two young women who probably had never ventured beyond the county line. The twins’ charm, aided by their worldwide fame and substantial wealth, proved almost irresistible.
Their obstacles, however, were also nearly insurmountable.
Laws prohibiting marriage and sex between whites and people of color had been in existence since colonial times. In 1691, Virginia passed the first anti-miscegenation law in the colonies, followed by Maryland in 1692 and then by Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and others in the years to come. In North Carolina, a 1741 statute fined any white man or woman who married “an Indian, negro, mustee [octoroon] or mulatto man or woman, or any person of mixed race to the third generation.” A second 1741 statute forbade any cleric or justice of the peace from performing any such marriage. In 1839, just when Chang and Eng arrived in North Carolina, the state assembly, as if anticipating troubles brewing in its northwestern mountains, “took a step to strengthen normative marriage by prohibiting marriage between free persons of color and white persons and by declaring any such marriage already entered into to be null and void.”9 The issue of miscegenation also drew national attention that year when the Massachusetts General Assembly waged a debate over repealing the ban on interracial marriage. The repeal, opposed by the abolitionists, who advocated freedom for blacks but feared racial mixing, failed in the former Bay Colony. It was not until 1967 that the ban on marriage between people of different races was, finally and definitively, ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in the landmark case Loving v. Virginia. At the time of the ruling, sixteen states still had miscegenation laws on their books.
Legal clarity notwithstanding, reality was murkier. The mere fact that in 1839 the North Carolina state assembly needed to pass a new bill to reinforce the existing prohibition was a clear indication that interracial liaisons must have taken place in spite of the laws. In her book on interracial sex in the nineteenth-century South, Martha Hodes points out that white anxiety about sex between white women and men of color, especially blacks, is not a timeless phenomenon in the United States and that the most virulent racist ideology about black male sexuality emerged in the decades that followed the Civil War. In the antebellum era, “white Southerners could respond to sexual liaisons between white women and black men with a measure of toleration; only with black freedom did such liaisons begin to provoke a near-inevitable alarm.” In North Carolina in the 1830s, as Hodes’s research uncovers, “marriage between free people of color and whites was more explicitly prohibited, yet such alliances did not cease.” In a western county, a black man and a white woman had lived together and cohabited as man and wife for a decade before the court voided their union in 1842. In eastern North Carolina, a black man and a white woman had no trouble getting a marriage license from a county clerk in 1840, and the census taker that year recorded the household as consisting of one white female and one free man of color.10
This is not to paint a rosy picture of North Carolina in the 1840s, but only to reveal the gray area where interracial unions were allowed to take place despite state laws and communal sanctions against them. In her study, Hodes draws an important distinction between tolerance and toleration: “Tolerance implies a liberal spirit toward those of a different mind; toleration by contrast suggests a measure of forbearance for that which is not approved.” The latter, not the former, describes white attitudes toward sexual liaisons between men of color and white women in the antebellum South. Yet, as Hodes reminds us, “the phenomenon of toleration, no matter how carefully defined, cannot convey the complexity of responses: white neighbors judged harshly, gossiped viciously, and could completely ostracize the transgressing white woman.”11 These were the racial dynamics and communal forces at work when Chang and Eng courted the Yates sisters with their globetrotting tales and tintinnabulating flute notes.
Just as the twins obtained citizenship by benefiting from the invisibility of Chinese as a racial category, they might also have been able to circumvent marriage laws by jumping through the same loophole. In US Census Bureau documents, Chang and Eng, like many Chinese at the time, were—given the white–black hierarchy—considered “honorary” whites. Even in 1870, when “C” had been created as a catchall category for Chinese and all Asians on the US census, Chang and Eng were still recorded as being white by the census takers. But what is recorded on paper can have very little bearing on how people really feel about race. Chang and Eng were Asian in the eyes of Wilkes County residents, no matter what the census taker decided to put on the form. So we are back to square one, to the question: Would the white sisters marry these Asian men? In the words of Judge Graves, the initial difficulty the twins encountered in their courtship came not from the fact that these prospective husbands were attached at the liver, but from the “ineradicable prejudice against their race and nationality.”12 Even if the girls were tempted by the twins’ advances, their father was appalled by the prospect of marrying his two daughters to two swarthy Chinese who, to make matters worse, were freaks.
Over the years, newspapers had now and then published idle speculation and made a farce out of rumors about Chang and Eng’s romantic intrigues. The very first of such reports came when they arrived in England in 1829. As previously quoted, the twins were portrayed as being innocently flirtatious with the hotel chambermaid in London. From that period, there was also the story about a British society woman named Sophie, who was enamored of one of the twins but had to give up her amorous designs because of the fear of bigamy. In November 1834, a rumor surfaced again, according to the Mobile [Alabama] Register and the Baltimore Patriot, that “the Siamese Twins have had a falling out with each other, and that a duel would have ensued sometime since, but the parties could not agree upon the distance. The quarrel originated from the interference of Chang, in a love intrigue of his twin brother Eng.” But other newspapers soon disputed the claim and tried to set the record straight, as did the Pittsfield [Massachusetts] Sun: “The Siamese Twins are at Columbia, S.C. The report that they had quarreled about a love affair turns out to be ‘a weak invention of the enemy.’ ” Or, as the New Hampshire Sentinel put it, “Chang and Eng are still good friends, though some malicious people did report that Chang had a love affair on hand which he wished to conceal from Eng.” In December 1836, the Portsmouth [New Hampshire] Journal reported: “One of the Siamese Twins is said to have fallen in love with a young lady at Wilmington, Del. She likes Chang well enough, but objects to marrying both.” A few months later, in February 1837, the New Hampshire Sentinel, quoting other sources, claimed that the twins “flatly deny the story, which some mischievous persons have put in circulation, respecting their having fallen in love with the same young lady, and fought a duel at ten paces. Eng says he wishes to marry, but he cannot, without the consent of his brother, who is inclined to a life of a single blessedness.” The latest, and most farcical, update on this front came out in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on June 6, 1838, claiming that one of the twins would marry “Miss Afong Moy, the little Chinese lady,” a popular exhibition at New York’s Peale Museum, where she had often shared the stage with the twins since her debut in 1834. “The happy bridegroom,” the newspaper added, “had invited his brother to stand up with him and act as groomsman.”13
Many of these reports were nothing but tabloid pabulum concocted by editors to sell papers at the expense of the twins’ perceived monstrosity. But it is true that the twins, despite their abnormality, had always pursued an interest in women, as any heterosexual men would. Based on what the twins later recalled for interviewers, the mythical Sophia from the London days might have been real. Nor did their dalliance with the British chambermaid sound too far-fetched. Completely different from visitors who came and went in public, maids or daughters of innkeepers were the only members of the opposite sex the twins could meet for an extended period in a more intimate setting. Their ledger reveals expenses on gifts apparently for these women. For instance, on August 5, 1833, they spent $1.50 on a ring as a present, romantic or not, for one Caroline Scovill, daughter of the hotel owner in Cleveland, Philo Scovill. Though she was not the romantic interest for the twins, Fanny Harris (née Baugus), if we recall, was the charming daughter of the boardinghouse keeper in Traphill.
And then there was Catherine Bunker, daughter of a New York businessman, with whom Chang had allegedly fallen in love. According to some biographers, Chang had such a lingering crush on her that when the twins later had to adopt an official surname, they chose “Bunker.” Moreover, when Chang drew up his first will, he even named Catherine, by then married to someone else, as his major heir.14 Also, in early 1832, about the time they turned twenty-one, Chang and Eng had tried to use their former manager, James Hale, as an intermediary in their wooing of a young lady in the Northeast. They sent her at least two letters via Hale, who mocked them as “my old stick-in-the-mud rapscallions” and tried to boost their morale when she failed to reply: “Don’t be uneasy my dear fellows for I expect the former letter must have miscarried—and no doubt the last will be shortly answered.”15
None of these romantic capers, real or fictional, had been taken seriously by the press or the twins’ associates. They only helped to pique interest in the freak show, inviting the public to visualize the conjoined twins in a fool’s errand of wooing a single damsel. As long as they played the part of fools, the twins could be celebrated and ridiculed as carnival clowns, and expressions of their carnal desire, genuine or contrived, only further spiced up the comedy. But now, at the foot of the Blue Ridge, the carnival play was about to become a reality—to the horror of the peering and cheering crowd.
Earnest as they were, the twins were no fools regarding the mountainous hurdle facing them in the matter of matrimony. The five-inch ligament that connected them would stop any maiden dead in her tracks. A bedroom dialogue between the twins after their meeting with the Yates girls, a sort of chest-baring in the dark, is dramatized by Shepherd Dugger in his biography:
Chang said to Eng, “We will keep in touch with those girls, for they think more of us than we are thought of by all else in America.”
“Maybe you are mistaken,” said Eng. “It was only a show acquaintance, and they did not want to render things unpleasant by bluffing our familiarity.”
“It was more than that,” said Chang. “I felt the thrill of their sympathy deep down in my soul. Maybe they will marry us.”
“Marrying with us is a forlorn hope,” said Eng. “No modest girl is apt to marry, where the pleasures of her bridal bed would be exposed, as ours would have to be.”
Chang, always more the go-getter of the pair, would not accept Eng’s defeatism. And he saw a reason to remain hopeful.
“Brother, you see it wrong,” said Chang. “It is the refined (and those only) who can excuse whatever is necessary to become a mother. We are not responsible for our physical condition, and we should not have to die childless on that account. We will see again, the dear girls who talked so good to us today, and, through their love we may have children to carry our blood and image in the world, when we and their mothers have gone to the Glory Land.”
“Brother,” said Eng, “I never saw you so great a philosopher as you are now. Those girls inspired you, and when you go back to see them, don’t fail to take me, and I will do my best in helping you win Adelaide, who sent that thrill to the bottom of your craw. I know you have sand enough in your gizzard to digest it.”16
Chang probably would not have minded such a gentle ribbing from his twin, but still, they needed to do something to turn things around.
In Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, there is a crucial turn of events, a dramatic change of heart when the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, visits Pemberley, the sprawling estate of Mr. Darcy, whose marriage proposal she earlier rejected. In Darcy’s absence, Elizabeth tours the estate and is charmed by the grandeur and beauty of the place. She also hears convincing testimonials from Darcy’s servants about the kindness and generosity of the master:
It was a large, handsome stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills;—and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.17
As the Chinese saying goes, “When you love a house, you will also love the crow that lands on its roof [ai wu ji wu].” Elizabeth begins to wonder whether she has misjudged Darcy and whether she has made a mistake by turning down his proposal. At that moment, she imagines herself being the mistress of Pemberley, which “might be something!”
The house Chang and Eng had built in Traphill was certainly not as grand as Pemberley, but the twins’ courtship of the Yates sisters proceeded apace, almost as though it had taken a page from the classic British novel. It was said that Adelaide was more receptive to Chang’s advances than Sarah was to Eng’s, which created a dilemma for all four. Both Adelaide and Chang knew, of course, that their relationship would not stand a chance if Sarah did not come along, or Eng was, in a manner of speaking, to be left alone. The calculus was such that if one sister were to marry one of the twins and yet to bed both of them, it would certainly be considered polygamy; if the two sisters were to marry the twins, at least the numbers would be right—even if the situation would still seem mind-boggling to all concerned or curious. Winning over Sarah, then, became a must for the marriage plot to work. Eng turned to Adelaide for help, and Adelaide, having her own interest at stake, willingly became Eng’s confidant and messenger. When necessary, she would add a few words of approval of Eng and some sisterly advice to Sarah. Eng’s advances and Adelaide’s whispers softened Sarah’s heart, but still, as Graves put it, “she gave but slight encouragement” to Eng.18
Against Sarah’s “pride and prejudice,” the twins came up with an idea to impress the recalcitrant young woman: “quiltin’,” as it was called in this part of the world. One of the traditional means of sociability for women, a quilting party brought together the community, mostly women, for chat, gossip, courtship, and other forms of interaction while sewing a quilt, which provided a symbolic coherence. With their special purpose in mind, Chang and Eng were determined to make this the fanciest quiltin’ anyone had ever seen. As Graves described in his biography, “Preparations on an adequate scale were duly made. Pigs and lambs and ‘the fatted calf’ were slain to make ready for the feast.”19 Then, on the appointed day, farm wives and daughters from nearby, including Adelaide and Sarah, dressed in their best gowns, cambric collars, and lace caps, arrived at the twins’ house for an evening of merriment and a feast on a Homeric scale. They took their places in the big sitting room, much bigger than their ordinary farmhouse living rooms, and arranged themselves around the four sides of a quilting frame. While the women began to stitch and chat, the twins circled around them, entertaining, wisecracking, and paying special attention to the two Yates sisters—treating them like princesses and making them the envy of all the others. As the delicate fingers flew through stitches and words of banter bounced around, most of the women there had no clue that they were participating in the Niobe-like weaving of the biggest local “scandal.” They would be shocked to learn that the freakish “Sime twins,” as they called them, were not just flirting innocently with the Yates girls. As Graves continues in his account of the fated night and after, “The quilting was soon done, and the supper over, the young folks betook themselves to the various amusements in which they enjoyed until a late hour. The next day Miss Sally did not leave for home until she had heard the earnest vows of her lover, nor did he cease to plead, with that persuasive eloquence sincere passion lends, until success was attained.”20 Sarah apparently was impressed by what she saw at the twins’ home at Traphill. Though not a grand mansion, the house was, in the words of Graves, “uncommonly elegant,” equipped with silverware, brass candlesticks, ivory-handled knives, tablecloths, and so on, all bought in New York—which could have been Paris, as far as the local women were concerned. The rooms were airy and spacious, neatly furnished with tables and benches of solid wood and chairs made of hickory and bottomed with polished splits of white oak. In the corner of the parlor were “several clay pipes with long cane stems while nearby hung the calico poke filled with smoking tobacco, native grown, but of the choicest flavor.”21 Overall, everything showed the good taste of the house’s masters. Like Elizabeth Bennet imagining her future as mistress of Pemberley, Sarah had begun to see the bright side of being wedded to the twins, or one of them. Such a bright side may be summarized succinctly in the words of Adelaide, as she is portrayed in Burton Cohen’s play The Wedding of the Siamese Twins (1989), “They’ve traveled. They’re interestin’. They’ve got money. They want us real good.”22
Having finally won the hearts of both sisters, Chang and Eng would now need to clear the hurdle of the parents. David Yates was adamant in his opposition, and so was his wife, Nancy, even though her own physical condition should have made her more malleable in her feelings toward these two Asian “freaks.” According to contemporary testimonies, Nancy was morbidly obese. “This lady was about five feet seven inches in height and nearly nine feet in circumference,” describes Graves.
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 steel yards drawing together four hundred and fifty pounds which being firmly secured a sort of swinging platform was attached thereto. When 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 the 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.23
In fact, Nancy was sometimes visited as an object of curiosity just like the Siamese Twins. Shared physical abnormality could have turned Nancy into the twins’ sympathizer. But it did not, although growing up with a mother who was “abnormal” might have made the girls more receptive to the twins in the first place. Having encountered curiosity, if not stares, from the local people as a result of their mother’s enormity, the sisters, one can suspect, might have already been inured to associating the disabled with Hester Prynne–like outcasts of the community. As portrayed in The Wedding of the Siamese Twins, the sisters’ attitudes toward the twins as freaks were indeed influenced by their own mother’s abnormality:
ADELAIDE. Why? They’re farmers just like Poppa.
SALLY. And real peculiar lookin’ ones, too.
ADELAIDE. Anymore peculiar lookin’ than Momma?
SALLY. (Shocked.) You’re talkin’ about our Momma who has loved you to pieces ever since you showed your nasty mouth on this good green land.
ADELAIDE. My mouth ain’t nasty. I’m speakin’ the truth. Momma don’t look like anyone else we ever saw. Do you love her any less because of it?24
Although it is fictional, Cohen’s Broadway play contains more than a kernel of truth.
Parental opposition, however, did not stop the girls from wanting to unite with these two united brothers. Defying their parents’ order, they rendezvoused, though stealthily, with the twins. They sought the help of the pastor of the Baptist Church, Colby Sparks, who agreed to intervene and spoke to the parents, but to no avail. In desperation, the girls and their Siamese sweethearts resorted to the time-honored tactic of elopement to fulfill their conjugal dream. They came up with a plot:
For a time the matter was to be apparently dropped until the ensuing county court week when Esquire Yates, who was one of the county justices, would go to Wilkesboro to assist in holding the court, then the parties at an appointed hour should meet at a “Covenant Meeting House” which stands on the hill near the South Fork of Roaring River, and there, their old friend Colby Sparks, the Baptist Pastor, was to be in waiting ready to perform the ceremony, easy to be done before there could be any danger from pursuit. They understood pretty well there could then be no pursuit, for the irate father could not know of their flight in some time, and the mother who weighed five hundred pounds could not follow over such roads as lay between the Yates homestead and Covenant Meeting House.25
In the end, it turned out that they did not have to resort to such a desperate measure. The parents relented before the planned elopement. We are not entirely sure what had caused the parents to change their minds—perhaps they were well aware of the stubbornness of their daughters; perhaps the mother’s disability eventually made the Yateses feel more receptive to the twins’ abnormal condition; perhaps the twins’ wealth made the match easier for the parents to stomach, knowing that their daughters would be well provided for; or perhaps it was a combination of these factors. In any case, the wedding was set for April of 1843.
When the sleepy community awoke to the shocking news, the good folks did not take it well. When they saw the conjoined twins riding with the Yates girls in an open carriage, their resentment, already at a high point because of fears of liaisons between whites and blacks, reached a boiling point. A few men, according to Kay Hunter, smashed windows at the Yates house. Some neighbors “threatened to burn his crops if he did not promise to control his daughters.”26 Having world-famous freaks live among them was one thing, but seeing them united with two of their young women in an “unholy alliance” was quite another. The community outrage might not have been as violent as those dramatic scenes in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, when the enraged crowd attacked the clown and the beauty, but it was enough to make all concerned pause.
The longtime associates of the twins were also aghast. Charles Harris, who had now settled comfortably in Traphill after marrying a local girl and siring an heir, was appalled by the twins’ desire for the same thing. As someone who had traveled the world with the twins and taken care of their various interests and needs for a decade, Harris seemed unable to accept the possibility that the conjoined twins could live a life as normal as his. He tried to talk the twins out of what he regarded as their foolishness, but to no avail. Disappointed, Harris communicated with James Hale, whose reaction was even more indignant and nasty. “Give me all the particulars of the marriage,” Hale replied to Harris. “I am very anxious to know how they got into such a stupid scrape. If they only wanted skin, I think they might have managed to get it for less than for life.”27 As I described earlier, Hale had showed a willingness, genuine or feigned, to facilitate the twins’ romantic pursuits—or, to put it in his crude words, to satisfy their carnal desire for “skin.” But, just like Harris, Hale found it absurd that the twins would try to marry and live a “normal” life. Fallout then ensued between the twins and Harris. They had no choice but to distance themselves from their former manager and old friend.
Neither the outcry of community members nor the opposition from friends and associates could derail the twins from executing their conjugal plan. It had been more than two years since they had settled in Traphill, and they had built a strong enough social network to sustain a temporary outburst of cries and grumblings. Also, David Yates, though not a pillar of the community, was after all a wealthy planter and county justice—in other words, a force to be reckoned with. As soon as he gave his blessing to the marriage, the cow, so to speak, was out of the barn.
Accordingly, on April 13, 1843, a very fine early spring day, the most unusual double wedding took place at David Yates’s house in Mulberry Creek, officiated by Reverend Colby Sparks. Considering the extraordinary nature of the union, the twins and the Yates family took care to follow the law to the letter—never mind the part that forbade miscegenation—and posted a bond of $1,000 for each marriage. North Carolina required postings of such bonds to ensure that there was no legal obstacle to the proposed marriage. Volunteering as the bondsman for the Yates party was Sarah and Adelaide’s elder brother, Jesse. The bond for Eng and Sarah reads:
Know all men by these presents that we Eng one of the Siamese Twins and Jesse Yates are held and firmly bound unto the state of North Carolina in the sum of one thousand Dollars, current money, to be paid to the said state of North Carolina for payment whereof, well and truly to be made and done we bind ourselves our Heirs executors and administrators jointly and severally, firmly by these presents sealed with our seal and dated this 13th day of April A.D. 1843.
The condition of the above obligation is such, that the above bounden Eng one of the Siamese Twins has made application for a license for marriage to be celebrated between him and Sarah Yates of the County aforesaid now in case it should not hereafter appear that there is any lawful cause or impediment to obstruct said marriage, then the above obligation is to be void otherwise to remain in full force and virtue.
Eng
Jesse Yates.
Chang’s bond was identical except for the names of the bride and groom. Most extraordinarily, even on these bonds, Chang and Eng still had no last name. They were each known as “one of the Siamese Twins,” and each signed only his given name. However, on the marriage licenses issued by a county clerk a few days earlier, the last name “Bunker” mysteriously appeared. The crucial part of the licenses reads, “You are hereby licensed and authorized, to solemnize the rites of matrimony between Eng Bunker and Sarah Yates, and join them together as man and wife.” It seemed that the twins had no problem using their unique brand, “the Siamese Twins,” for official purposes, legal or financial. But the absence of a surname would not do for the women they were about to marry. They needed to choose something for the misses.28
As for how they landed on the name of Bunker, there have been a few theories and stories. As noted earlier, Judge Graves believed that the twins had chosen the name in honor of Catherine Bunker, the woman for whom Chang had still carried a torch. Bunker was also the name of the New York company with which the twins had maintained a lasting business and banking relationship, an enterprise run by Frederick, William, and Barthuel Bunker—Catherine’s father and uncles.
Another explanation of the name’s provenance sounds more comical: When the twins went to the Naturalization Office to sign citizenship papers, the clerk asked for their names, and “Chang and Eng” was the answer they gave. The dismayed clerk told them that unless they could provide a Christian name or a surname, they would not be able to complete the application process. While the twins stood in confusion, a gentleman named Fred Bunker came to their rescue by suggesting that he would consider it an honor if the twins would adopt his family name, which the twins happily obliged.29 This story, though intriguing, is apocryphal. The twins had acquired citizenship in 1839, and if they had adopted the Bunker name at that time, there had been no sign of it. None of the documents to date, including court summonses, business records, and personal correspondence, contained a trace of the Bunker name until its sudden appearance on the marriage licenses. In fact, records at the superior court in Wilkes County show that it was not until 1844, a year after their marriage, that the twins petitioned the court to legally adopt the Bunker name. Also, in the county archive, the marriage bonds are now accompanied by a slip of paper that states, “TOOK NAME OF BUNKER, FOR SURNAME.” It seems that the twins did indeed adopt the surname around the time of their marriage but did not legalize it until a year later.30
Another explanation of the name might be far less plausible than poetic: Bunker sounds like a corrupt form of Bangkok, a city that still tugged at the heartstrings of the twins.
Whatever the real reason, the twins had now settled on a name by which they would be known—and one that their brides would assume. In the quiet living room of the Yates house, shielded from the peering eyes of the public but still within earshot of neighborly guffaws and grumblings, the famous Siamese Twins were wedded to the two sisters: first Eng and Sarah, and then Chang and Adelaide. It was probably moot to speculate who the best man was for Eng and who for Chang. The marriage vow that contains the phrase “until death do you part” would certainly carry extra meaning for that occasion.
After the ceremony, the small gathering of family and friends were treated to “a most elegant supper,” followed by the Virginia reel, a group dance popular in this mountainous region. After the festivities were over, Chang and Eng took their brides home to Traphill, where an extra-wide bed—widest perhaps in all of North Carolina or even North America—awaited the four of them.31