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

Millie-Christine McKoy Siamese Twins