Qualla: Chang and Eng Bunker

Chang and Eng Bunker: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit unattributed, Public domain. A Scottish merchant on a fishing boat in Siam mistook them for a strange animal. It was 1824, dusk on the Menam River, and two boys were swimming -- joined at the chest by a band of flesh and cartilage. Robert Hunter saw not two children but an economic opportunity, and five years later, Chang and Eng arrived in Boston Harbor. They were seventeen years old, spoke no English, and had no idea that their bodies would coin a phrase still used two centuries later. Today their story ends where it truly began: in the rolling hills south of Mount Airy, North Carolina, where two boys from Siam became American citizens, plantation owners, husbands, and fathers of twenty-one children.

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Image: unattributed | Public domain

Chang and Eng Bunker: From Meklong to the World Stage

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle, Public domain. Born in May 1811 in the village of Meklong -- today's Samut Songkhram, Thailand -- Chang and Eng were raised by their mother Nak after their father died, likely in a smallpox epidemic around 1819. Despite being connected at the sternum, they ran and played like any other children...

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Image: George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle | Public domain

Chang and Eng Bunker: Putting Down Roots in Wilkes County

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit W.L. Germon (Washington Lafayette, 1822-1877); Germon's Temple of Art, 914 Arch Street, Philadelphia. Germon was located at this address, listed on verso, from 1865 to 1872., Public domain. After a decade of touring, the twins played their final show in Jefferson, North Carolina, on July 4, 1839, and chose to stay. They purchased land near the rural community of Traphill in Wilkes County for three hundred dollars, along Little Sandy Creek near the Roaring River. The...

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Image: W.L. Germon (Washington Lafayette, 1822-1877); Germon's Temple of Art, 914 Arch Street, Philadelphia. Germon was located at this address, listed on verso, from 1865 to 1872. | Public domain

Chang and Eng Bunker: Two Houses, Three Days at a Time

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Bunkers eventually moved to Surry County, building homes south of Mount Airy along Stewart's Creek. Their domestic arrangement was as remarkable as anything in their performing days: the twins alternated between two separate houses, three days at each. The twin whose house th...

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Image: Public domain

Chang and Eng Bunker: A Nation's Mirror

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. During the Civil War, newspapers seized on the twins as a metaphor for a divided nation. The New-York Tribune published a colorful allegory claiming Chang wanted the ligament between them painted black while Eng refused, and that a 'Dr. Lincoln' warned separation surgery would be...

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Image: Public domain

Chang and Eng Bunker: Then I Am Going

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hameltion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Early on the morning of January 17, 1874, one of Eng's sons checked on his father and uncle sleeping in a chair by the fireplace. 'Uncle Chang is dead,' the boy said. Eng, awake now, replied: 'Then I am going!' He died roughly two hours later. The autopsy at the College of Physic...

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Image: Hameltion | CC BY-SA 4.0