Chang and Eng

The introductory level American Studies classes have to be among the most interesting, diverse classes that the University offers. I took the first semester class two years ago when I was trying to decide on a major and I'm taking the second semester class right now because I needed classes to be a full time student.

The intro classes cover a wide variety of topics. We have learned about the Enlightenment, the history of the game of baseball, Charles Darwin, how Latin music has influenced America, New York in the 1920s, and will cover the Wild West, Southern Music, Mark Twain and other things. You never know what you will cover in that days lecture when you walk into the lecture hall.

Today our lecture covered P.T. Barnum's American Museum. Dr. Tang went over the history of Barnum, the society of the times, and gave us background information on the museum. Then he went on to tell us about some specific exhibits that were at the museum. So I'll do that.

P.T. Barnum started his American Museum in New York City and it operated for 23 years, from 1842 to 1865. During those years approximately 30 million tickets were sold and by the time the museum closed it had 850,000 exhibits.


One of those exhibits was Chang and Eng the first pair of Siamese twins. If you ever wondered where the name "Siamese twins" comes from, look no further. P.T. Barnum had them billed as "Siamese Twins" because they were conjoined twins from Siam, and the name stuck for all conjoined twins. Their history with Barnum is not the part that stuck out about them in today's lecture, even though it is cool. They were joined together by a piece of cartilage at their sternum. As part of their act with Barnum they were able to do cartwheels together, which seems to me like it would be an amazing thing to see.

According to Dr. Tang in lecture the life of these twins outside of Barnum's American Museum was a soap opera in the making. The brothers moved to Wilkesboro, North Carolina and married two sisters. The twins and their wives were busy doing what married couples do and produced 21 children. The sisters, who had been close before the marriage, grew further apart until there was so much tension that each wife had a separate house. One twin would spend three days with his wife, then the next three days the other twin would be with his wife and then they had a day of rest. Can you imagine, in 1843, how much of a scandal that would be? It's a threesome all the time. Scandalous!

Then comes the Civil War. You hear stories all the time about two brothers who fought against each other, one for the Union while the other was for the Confederacy. Here is where I'm getting different stories about the Bunker twins, each one is just unreal though. I guess I should say at this point that I am looking at various websites and making sure that other sources are saying the same thing that Dr. Tang told us in lecture.

One version of the story, courtesy of Dr. Tang. When the time came for the Civil War one brother was on the side of the Confederacy while the other brother was for the side of the Union. Talk about brother against brother.

The other version of the story, courtesy of various Civil War websites. Both twins had sworn loyalty to the Confederacy and taught their sons to be loyal to the Confederate cause. However, in 1965 and Union general came into town and put all male names into a draft lottery. Eng Bunker's name was drawn. Yet his twin was not drafted and therefore refused to fight for the Union. Seeing as how Chang refused to fight, Eng then resisted the draft. The Union decided not to force him to fight seeing as how his twins name was not pulled from the lottery also.

You never know what you'll learn in class each day.