Few immigrants to the United States had more daunting barriers than Chang and Eng Bunker, the original “Siamese Twins,” writes The Wall Street Journal. The twins were born in 1811 on a riverboat at a fishing village in Siam, but they were actually Chinese. They were joined at the base of their chest by a band of flesh and at the age of 13, they were “discovered” by the Scottish merchant Robert Hunter. In 1829, the American ship captain Abel Coffin tricked them into signing a contract. He was then able to bring the twins west for a touring exhibition as “freaks of nature.” They were treated no better than slaves and were advertised as monsters, WSJ writes. But the wins did not stand ideally by, but instead, began to fight for their independence. When they turned 21 in May 1832, they drafted and signed a letter that detailed their abuse and exploitation by Coffin while he was abroad on business. When he returned a few months later, the twins had already left to make it on their own. They found a manager who would work for them and eventually turned themselves into the most popular showmen of antebellum America.
In 1839, Chang and Eng retired to Wilkes County, North Carolina. They bought land, built houses and became farmers. At the time, federal law limited the privileges of naturalized citizenship to “free white persons,” but the small number of Chinese in the U.S. were sometimes considered “honorary whites.” Using their celebrity status, wealth and connections, the twins acquired American citizenship. They went on to marry two white sisters, Adelaide and Sarah, daughters of David Yates. Together, the wives produced 21 children. At the double wedding, Chang and Eng’s father-in-law gave them a slave woman. Though they were treated like slaves when they first arrived, the twins ended up owning and trading slaves themselves, and even fathered children with their slaves. At the peak of their wealth, they owned 32 slaves. After the war, they were broke, so went back on the road as showmen. The twins died on Jan. 17, 1874.
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