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Grave of World's Second Most Famous Siamese Twins On July 11, 1851, twin girls joined at the hip were born to slaves, Jacob and Monemia on Jabe McCoy's plantation in the Welches Creek community northeast of Whiteville. At that time, the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, who had gained worldwide fame exhibiting themselves, had settled in Western North Carolina, where they married sisters and were rearing families. McCoy was quick to realize the possibilities for his twins and sold them before they were a year old for $1000 and 25 percent of the income from exhibiting them. But the buyer had little success showing them so young, and when they were 2, McCoy waived all rights to them for $200. The twins were sold again and by the age of four were being exhibited in Europe, where doctors determined their spines were fused, making separation impossible. Although they had had clearly separate nervous systems and minds of their own, the twins, named Millie and Christine at birth, called themselves Mille-Chrissy, thought of themselves in the singular, and frequently walked on only two of their four legs. Extraordinarily congenial, they learned to recite and sing sweetly at their exhibitions. By age ten, the twins were back in this country, and the owner who had inherited them, Joseph Pearson Smith of South Carolina, hid them near Spartanburg during the Civil War to keep them out of the hands of Union troops. After winning their freedom following the war, the twins, who were exceptionally bright, hired a manager and again toured Europe, where they gained great fame for their singing, learned to speak fluently in five languages, and became special favorites of England's Queen Victoria, who frequently summoned them to perform. By the turn of the century, the twins had returned to their birthplace and built a fourteen-room house on property once owned by the man who had owned them at birth. There they frequently received friends and family and entertained on the big front porch. But in 1909 the house burned, destroying all the mementoes of their world travels. Soon after the fire, Mille contracted tuberculosis and grew steadily weaker. She died peacefully on the afternoon of October 8, 1912, at age sixty-one, in the presence of Dr. W. H. Cromwell of Whiteville, who had made acquaintance with the twins while studying in England. Chrissy, who detected her sister's death before the doctor did, lived less than a day (reports vary from eight to seventeen hours) and spent her last hours calmly praying and singing favorite hymns. The twins were buried in a double cypress coffin in the cemetery of a small Baptist church near their home. A metal grave marker was melted in a forest fire that swept through the area years later. In 1969, the Columbus County Historical Society got family permission to move and remark the grave. The remains were reburied in the Welches Creek Community Cemetery not far from the original site and a granite marker was erected. "A soul with two hearts," reads part of the inscription. "Two hearts that beat as one."
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