Chang and Eng Bunker

The original Siamese Twins

Although their mother-in-law weighed more than 500 pounds, they did not meet in a circus sideshow.

This lady was about five feet seven inches in height and nearly nine feet in circumference. Her accurate weight was never ascertained for the reason that there were in that neighborhood no adequate means of weighing her. Several contrivances were resorted to ascertain her weight, but the nearest approach to success was by using two pairs of steelyards drawing together four hundred and fifty pounds which being firmly secured a sort of swinging platform was attached thereto. Then this good woman stepped upon the platform both beams flew up; but the gentleman engaged in the enterprise estimated that her weight could not have been less than five hundred pounds. She was unquestionably the largest woman in this state, perhaps in America. Long after the time we have been speaking of, she died of obesity. When her coffin was taken from the undertakers it could not be gotten into the house until an opening was made for it.

They fought in the Civil War, for the South naturally.

Chang became an alcoholic in their later years, and the brothers fought bitterly.

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