Millie-Christine McKoy Siamese Twins

By MARK GILCHRIST

Chief Photographer

 It was the most unusual slave transaction on record, and it occurred here in Columbus County. Infant twins Millie and Christine McKoy of Welches Creek, who are remembered around here as “Millie-Christine,” were leased and sold to be freak attractions in circus sideshows and county fairs.

The document, still on file at the register of deeds office in Whiteville, freed them from ever having to pick cotton or tobacco, but subjected them to childhoods of relentless public humiliation for their rare birth defect that made the two girls one.

They could have been mules, or a barn or cattle the way the records reveal the lease and sale of the children more than 150 years ago. They weren’t even listed by name.

The “…twin negro girls about ten months old and united from their birth…” were conjoined twins who would travel around the country and Europe for more than half a decade beginning in 1852. But first, they were “bargained, sold and delivered” from the slave family’s owner, Jabez McKay, to South Carolinian John C. Pervis, for $1,000 and a share of the profits, according to a legal agreement filed at the courthouse.

It is believed that the slave family adopted a derivation of their owner’s last name, from McKay to McKoy.

For his money in this first agreement, dated May 18, 1852, Pervis had the legal right to take the children on the road and “…shall cause the said twin negro girls to be exhibited for pay at such times and places as he or they may designate.” Pervis did just that, displaying the girls as freaks for a few pennies a peek in halls and theaters and public events throughout the South.

The girls’ mother, Monemia McKoy, was allowed to “…go with and accompany [the girls] without any charge for her services so long as the said John C. Pervis shall keep or wish to exhibit the said twin girls.”

Per his contract, Pervis had to continue paying the children’s owner. He “…shall from time to time and at all times when thereunto requested by the said Jabez McKay his lawful Attorney or legal representative will and truly account for and pay over unto him the said Jabez McKay or his lawful attorney or legal representative one fourth of the net proceeds accruing from the exhibition of said twin girls…” the agreement states.

Pervis appears to have had a loophole in the contract where he could have sold the girls at any time. “In case the said John C. Pervis or his heirs executors or administrators shall sell the said twin negro girls, or in case they should be sold by precept of law he doth hereby agree and promise to pay unto the said Jabez McKay one fourth of the proceeds of the sale…”

Two prominent local men witnessed the contract. T.S. Memory of the Memory Co., and J.A. Maultsby sealed the deal in the same year the county established the new, brick courthouse on the site where the current one stands.

Pervis didn’t act on this clause, even though he apparently could have sold the girls at any time for any amount to anybody – even a partner – as a way to get out of the contract and keep the ebony golden eggs in his basket.

Whatever agreement the two men had, it changed 16 months later when McKay sold the girls to Pervis, receiving “…the sum of two hundred dollars in full for all my right, title and interest in and to certain twin negroes (sic) girls united in their persons and also for my interest and claim to one fourth of the proceeds that have arisen or may herafter (sic) arise from the exhibition of the said twin negro girls…” according to the bill of sale registered with the county.

On September 30, 1853, with his signature, Pervis became the legal owner of two girls born to a slave on a Columbus County farm only two years earlier. It was reported that Pervis then gave up the business and sold the girls to a man with the surname “Brower,” who exhibited the twins at the State fair in Raleigh. Brower then took them, without their mother, through the South and to New Orleans where he lost them to a con man.

Thus began the international odyssey of the twins, who all but dropped their legal last name and would become wildly famous on two continents as The African Twins, and the Two-headed Nightingale, and to cement their unusual legacy they would forever be commonly known simply as one girl, Columbus County’s own Millie-Christine. 

By MARK GILCHRIST

Chief Photographer

The McKoy twins, conjoined at the hip and renown throughout the U.S. and Europe in the second half of the 19th century, were undoubtably Columbus County’s two most famous people, yet their legacy has faded into obscurity.

Reports are that, in 1851, Christine McKoy arrived first, emerging from the womb of Monemia McKoy of Welches Creek, so much larger than her smaller sister that Millie “looked like a knot on her back.”

The girls were an instant attraction, first in the county, then the U.S. and Europe.

They were born into slavery of the most unusual degree. Carted from town to town, examined thoroughly by physicians and charlatans, and gawked at by strangers by the thousands, these girls led the rarest of childhoods.

They were sold as slaves, leased as freak show subjects, kidnapped, taken overseas and rescued by their mother – all before they became teenagers. 

Their travels began with an exhibit at the state fair in Raleigh where the infants were a major draw. Then to New Orleans, where their owner sold them to a con man who left with them and without a trace.

Still toddlers, they traveled north to New England and Canada, drawing crowds everywhere. They were taken on a steamship to Europe, where they were presented as The African Twins. 

The girls were natural performers and became a popular attraction on the heels of the original “Siamese” twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, who were born in Siam in 1811. The Bunkers had toured the world and settled near Mt. Airy,

As the world’s newest freak show, the girls entertained everyone from the common man who parted with a few pence for a peek at the “two-headed girl” to aristocrats and royalty including England’s Queen Victoria. Long before radio and television, public entertainment in the mid-1800s was on the stage, and it was rarely Shakespeare. 

The girls toured with other human oddities, such as “The Tallest Couple Alive,” Anna Swan and Martin Van Buren Bates. They learned to sing and play piano, and when President Lincoln emancipated them in 1863, they were well prepared for a career in entertainment.

Their lives changed as they reached adulthood, certainly. They were no longer absconded slave children making fortunes for strangers among frenzied crowds, but were free adults selling a product that was no longer as new and bizarre as it had been a decade prior.

The McKoys toured with the Bunker twins, who died when the McKoys were in their 20s. They practiced music and dance routines and called themselves the Two-headed Nightingale.

In a rare case even for conjoined twins, the two girls promoted themselves as Millie-Christine, one girl with two heads. A poster for a tour with the Great Inter-Ocean Circus touted them as “Earth’s greatest wonder, the two-headed lady.

“She is the most marvellous (sic) human being born since the creation, having 2 perfect heads & shoulders, 4 hands and arms, 4 lower limbs and feet, and one body.”

So well known by their combined first names, they were referred to as Millie-Christine throughout the four documents handling their estate, with their last name appearing only once. It seems that only one of the sisters signed their will, and she signed it “Millie-Christine.”

Through their adult lives, the McKoy’s toured the fair circuit and with circuses including P.T. Barnum’s, (at least one season for a reported $25,000.) They lived as stars, often traveling and dining first-class, and they saw the world as few of their neighbors from this county – black or white – ever had.

They spent their days between tours in their new Welches Creek home, built on the site where they were born. They would arrive and depart through the railroad depot at Whiteville, stopping overnight sometimes at Mrs. Howell’s hotel next to the courthouse, a rare allowance for black people in that era. 

The girls amassed an extensive collection of furniture, mementos and gifts from all over the U.S. and Europe, but little has survived. Their house burned in 1909, destroying most evidence of their unusual legacy. 

Millie succumbed to tuberculoses on October 8, 1912 and her sister died the next day, their doctor, William Crowell, imploring Governor William Kitchin to let him administer enough morphine to ease Christine’s passing.

The twins’ estate was distributed to family and friends and it is unknown what is still here. 

After six decades as a household name on two continents, and then choosing to keep Columbus County their home, the McKoy twins have a nearly nonexistent legacy here in their home place.

The state erected a historical marker off Red Hill Road at U.S. 74-76, and that, along with a stone marker on their grave, is all that remains for us to remember them. They were our most well-known celebrities, and are our most well-kept secret.

Thanks Chris for your contribution to this site.  I was reared in Columbus County and had many conversations with Fred Mckoy Sr. about Aunt Millie-Christine.  The executor of their estate was none other than my Great Uncle Dr. Oscar Brent Baldwin son of Frank Baldwin.  I will contribute his photo to the site.  He was a prominent physician. 

I have been researching the twins for all of 12 years or more and will be excited to present my book based on facts that other writers are not aware of because the never looked into the county history or the lineage perspective and the plight of slavery and issues surrounding the mixed race peoples of the county and free blacks.

The public needs to know what was really going on in Welches Creek when the twins were born.  Who were those people who she secretly help educate?  Only if you interviewed Mrs. Hallie Baldwin Powell, and the late Fred Mckoy Sr. would you know these answers.

There are many many  100's of descendants gggnieces, gggnephews, and cousins of Millie-Christine across the globe.  The famiy who were reared in Welches Creek and did not migrate from the county can give more vivid accounts as well as collateral families in the community.

Why did she leave her last remaining assets to the women in the family and not the men?  There is a sad reality to this answer only family would know.  This teeters on women's history in the south that the late "Delany Sisters" wrote about in their book "Having Our Say"  One of them taught school in the Boardman in Columbus County.  Dr. Oscar Brent Baldwin attended Leonard Medical School where Lemuel Delany (Delany sister's brother)  attended some years earlier.

The Circus Museum in Wisconsin holds a sad photo of a ragged shotgun house where they died in.  There were no colonial mansion or plats of land that they held deed to that reflected their wealth.

Land wad a precious commodity down home and the fields had names i.e. the Pearlie Mckoy Field.  I looked at my grandmothers receipts and ran across a rental transaction between she and Pearlie Mckoy, great neice of Millie-Christine.

Where are the descendants of Monemia and Jacobs child who was sold off to the slave trader?  This takes some detective sleuth savvy to find out.  There are elders down home who talk about this to this day as well as the horrible tragedy Jacob and Monemia faced when they got back to the states after the long court battle overseas.

Fred Mckoy Sr. echoed these sentiments time and time again during our lunch break. while putting in tobacco.  The memorabilia that he loaned for Martel's book was never returned.

The nude photo in the book would have been left to the readers imagination if I were the writer.  I said my God!  would everyone want their mother's partially nude photo in a book?   But I guess some would call this being narrow minded.

My Aunt saw this and threw the book across the room in outrage!  She was the daughter of Johnny Mckoy great nephew of the twins.

I will invite the reader to a familial perspective of county history, slavery history religion and culture of slave ancestry and free blacks of Bladen and Columbus County. 

The sad reality is not a single person has chronicled this history outside of Dr. Todd Savitt of East Carolina University who has published a pamphlet on African American Medical Doctors of the South. 

He and I have shared many conversations over the years and I'm thankful for his work.

I have a pretty nice photo collection of the twins and have an expert eye now on those that are false or have been altered.  Every-time I look at them I can feed their spirit telling me to tell their story.

I've even gone to the Woodlands Cemetery to the grave on one of the Dr's. who examined them here in Philadelphia and got some insight from Dr. Fred Wagner, historian for Thomas Jefferson University Hospital before he died. 

I wanted to know who were those doctors, who were the students in the room and a litany of other questions of the practice of medicine back then.

I even befriended the great-granddaughter of Eng Bunker to dispel some of the untruths published in books back then and today.   This lady published a book with over 1000 photos and she did it without a computer.

Most of the information in books and on the Internet are very distorted about the P.T. Barnum relationship and Millie-Christine.

Folks write about this history as if slavery wasn't going on and the cruelest on "American Soil"   Just take a look at atrocities against blacks for Columbus and Bladen County.  I smile when I read other writers accounts of this histroy grabbing everything on the Internet, old records in archives to get some action on this history.  But they can't get the heart and the spirit of it because Millie-Christine has to commission it.  Only she can lead to the truth.  She will lead the right person to the keyboard and the stroke of the pin as others stumble over the facts.

Would you opt for emancipation never to go back home when you have a lot of children and extended family members enslaved?

Did the Smiths emancipate her?  NO...

Amazingly I got copies of their sheet music which is in the public domain.  I shared with the librarian that one of the producers had the same name as my son "Stephan Glover" and she fell out on the chair.  Aunt-Millie Christine even died on my son's birthday.  October 9th.  Her death was 8th and 9th abt. a 17 hour span.

Other writers have done an exhaustive work and should be respected and appreciated for the effort.  But history gets cheated when we talk about it and don't write about  it.

I plan to give everything I have to an archival collection where the public can seen it eons after I'm dead and gone.

I talked to a family member down home and he said that he had one of their trunks and his children destroyed it not understanding the historical significance of it.

The thought of their grave-site breaks my heart.  Chan and Eng have a monument but Aunt-Millie Christine has a small grave marker with their name spelled incorrectly on it.  Annie Mae said that she is buried on top of her father.

I'm broke from doing all this research.  But would love to see a campaign started to get them a decent and befitting memorial.  The last home house was a historical landmark and should have never been torn down.  There should be a historical marker on that road as well (near the original home).   At least the historical society down home did something.  We as family must be held accountable and move to correct this.

CREATED BY SHELDA BALDWIN GLOVER