The kindness, goodwill, and cooperation of many people go into the making of a book like this. We owe one and all our undying gratitude.
Our greatest debt of thanks for research assistance must go to Walter Kempthorne, of Riverside, California. His tireless correspondence and interviews, his initiative and persistence as a literary detective, truly made this book possible. Almost equally, we give our thanks to his wife, Elizebethe Kempthorne, whose scholarship, fact checking, and editing contributed so much to our biography of the original Siamese Twins. And for devoted assistance to Mr. and Mrs. Kempthorne in North Carolina, we give our thanks to Ruth Minick, Secretary of the Surry County Historical Society.
While all the materials we received proved valuable, a handful of papers were of incomparable help. For these, our special thanks to the staff of the Division of Archives and History of the State of North Carolina for use of primary biographical material on the twins and a great number of unpublished letters; to the library staff of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for use of Chang and Eng's income account book; to Milton Haynes, of Wilmington, North Carolina, for use of the twins' expense account book; to Mrs. Emma Bunker, of Mount Airy, North Carolina, for use of Nannie Bunker's diary; and to Mrs. Grace Haynes Hill, of Mount Airy, for the use of Judge Jesse F. Graves' unpublished biography of the twins and Nannie Bunker's photograph album.
We are indebted also to numerous other individuals who gave so selflessly of their time and energies to collaborate with us in our preparation of this biography of Chang and Eng. These persons, variously, gave us advice, suggestions, information, contacts, and provided us with original journals, pamphlets, lithographs, paintings, photographs, all of which aided in the development of our book. We are lastingly grateful to the following for their help:
Jonathan Daniels, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina; Dr. Worth B. Daniels, Washington, D.C.; George London, Raleigh, North Carolina; Mrs. Kate Cross, Mount Airy, North Carolina; Mrs. Dorothy Haymore, Mount Airy; Joffre Bunker, Mount Airy; Mrs. Alfred M. Haynes, Raleigh; Lucile Haynes, Washington, D.C.; Mrs. Henry Galt Siegrist, Bordentown, New Jersey; Mr. and Mrs. Kester Sink, Mount Airy; Mrs. W. 0. Absher, Wilkesboro, North Carolina; Mrs. Ruby Warren, Trap Hill, North Carolina; Mr. and Mrs. James Stinson, Wilmington, North Carolina; Dr. Fred C. Hubbard, North Wilkesboro, North Carolina; Mrs. Eugenia Tufts, Costa Mesa, California; Mrs. E. J. Clowser, Rome, Georgia; Mrs. Dorothy Coffin, Laguna Hills, California; Mrs. Mack Brown, Trap Hill; Reverend Frank McKenzie, North Wilkesboro; Joe H. Carter, Jr., Anderson, South Carolina; Mrs. Kate Hoster, Bradenton, Florida; Mrs. Frank Carter, Mount Airy; Daniel Adams, Los Angeles, California; Kay Hunter, Botesdale, England; Mr. Norman Shields, Bad-well Ash, England.
Our thanks, too, to the following researchers we employed:
Mrs. Michele Lawing, Raleigh, North Carolina; Mary Harasek, Ramsey, New Jersey; Inez Bremer, Rijswijk, The Netherlands; Enid Klass, New York, New York; Michael Gardener, Boston, Massachusetts; Mrs. Rosalind Toland, London, England.
We owe very special gratitude to a number of institutions, and to their dedicated personnel, who accumulated for us invaluable materials and photographs we were able to use. The following offered most useful aid:
The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Dr. William Powell, Dr. Carolyn A. Wallace, Mrs. Ellen Neal; Division of Archives and History, Department of Cultural Resources, State of North Carolina, Raleigh, and Paul P. Hoffman; Surry County Historical Society, Mount Airy, North Carolina, and Ruth Minick; National Archives, Washington, D.C., and the staff in charge of Civil War records; State Archives, Richmond, Virginia; The State magazine, Raleigh, North Carolina; Bridgeport Public Library, Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Mrs. Caroline Lydon, David W. Palmquist; Duke University's William R. Perkins Library, and Patricia Hummer; Mutter Museum, the College of Physicians, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Mrs. Lisabeth Holloway, Mrs. Ellen Gartrell, Mrs. Elizabeth Moyer, Gretchen Worden; the Mount Airy News, Mount Airy, and Jesse Burchette, Wanda Smith, and the entire staff; Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, and Kathy Flynn; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and Shirley Lebo, Dr. Oliver Orr; National Library, Bangkok, Thailand, and Niansiri Talaluck; Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin; Wilkes Community College, Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and Dr. J. Jay Anderson; Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, and Dr. Howard B. Gottleib; the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston, Massachusetts; Massachusetts State Archives, Boston; National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, and John Blake; the New York Historical Society, New York, New York; Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Illinois; Seattle Historical Society, Seattle, Washington; the Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York Public Library, New York, New York; University of California Library, Berkeley; Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts; the Mount Airy Public Library staff, Mount Airy; the Legislative Library of the North Carolina General Assembly, Raleigh.
And eternal thanks to Scott Bradley, Hank and Bella.