Continue – Eng and Chang Bunker and their families
From the first blog – Eng and Chang do have original names back in Siam (Thailand) – In and Jun.
Eng and Chang went on with their lives after leaving the tours because they earned plenty of incomes and able to buy farmland in Mount Airy, North Carolina, USA. They met an accountant, formerly immigrant from Ireland – Charles Harris. Charles Harris invited Eng and Chang to his wedding while the conjoined twins were at the wedding, they saw the Yates sisters and fell in love with the sisters. Eng and Chang married a pair of sisters – Sarah and Adelaide Yates. The locals were not happy with the twins who married the daughters of a well-respected Southern family. Most of the men broke the windows of the Yates’s house, and the men demanded the sisters to end the potential marriage in 1843.
Eng and Chang, along with their wives, proved nothing would stop from marriage and have families. In the first three years, they live in the one house, and Eng and Chang built two separated homes within 1km each other near Mount Airy, North Carolina. Eng and Sarah had got eleven children, and Chang and Adelaide had got ten children. Wow!
In two homes where Sarah and Adelaide were living separately, every three nights, Eng/Chang spend with their wife in one of the two houses. The conjoined twins take a turn of living with their wife and children in two homes until they died. Chang had many health issues, including alcohol and stroke, and he died from a blood clot. Nevertheless, Eng died a few hours later – two and a half hours. Most people mention Eng died from shock, but it was incorrect because of the blood clot travelled back and fro through a shared liver.
Let focus on the children of Chang and Adelaide Bunker. Anyone may not be aware of the deaf in the families. Yes, Chang and Adelaide have got two deaf children, and the name of their two children was Louise Emiline (1855-1934) and Jessie Lafayette (1861?-1909).
Louise and Jessie went to North Carolina School for the Deaf in Raleigh, NC. Louise met her future husband, who was a deaf instructor. His name was Zacharias W. Haynes, and they were married and had ten children, but one son died in a tragic accident.
“Courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Jessie Lafayette Bunker married Emma Davis, and they have got four children. Unfortunately, Jessie died young when he was hit by a lightning strike while working on a farm.
Today there are more than 1500 descendants the families and eleven sets of twins.
Piece of information from: –
The Lives of Chang and Eng, Siam’s Twins in Nineteenth-Century America by Joseph Andrew Orser
