This message is in response to the following exchange: Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 18:10:12 -0500 From: Vickie Burris <wburris@cdsnet.net> To: MASSENGILL-L@rootsweb.com My family twins lines were that they were all either boyes or girls. Dad said his two older brothers looked exactlly alike but one was left handed and one right. Back then I guess they tried to break the left handed children and teach them to be right handed. Please let me me know if this was the same in your family. Vickie Masengill Burris Ann Massengill wrote: I am interested in the occurrence of twins in the Massengill line. Do you know if your GWM was an identical or fraternal twin? Have you ever heard of the occurrence of "mirror image" twins, i.e., identical twins but one is left-handed, the other is right-handed, etc.? The George Washington Massengill of JCNC who is my great-grandfather was b. 12-17-1834 and d. 9-27-1912. MESSAGE FOLLOWS: Vickie, there are some old stories I remember as a child -- I mean I'm not that old but the stories were old when I was a child not very long ago! One story involved twin sisters; one died in some mysterious tragic way and the other could read her dead sister's mind, tracked down and killed her murderer. The other involved "mirror image twin" brothers -- both served in war-time (don't know which, but in the South, it's usually just "Thuh Wah", (that is, the War of Yankee Aggression). One came home "mutilated" (and I took that to mean he had lost one or both legs). His betrothed jilted him and married the Twin B, who was presumably not "mutilated". Twin A was found dead by his own hand, but the gun was in his (for the sake of argument and my fading memory, let's say) left hand. Twin A was right-handed. Twin B was left-handed. Twin B's wife was suspect; the twins knew they were mirror-image and would not have made such a mistake. As a footnote, I recall that a great-aunt argued valiantly that Twin A killed himself and tried to make it look like Twin B had murdered him; my uncle kept trying to explain that you cannot change the hand you hold the gun in after you've blown your brains out. I had the impression this woman lived in an upstairs room and only came down for ceremonial occasions... she may have been the wife. I notice that most sibs who appear by b-date or age to be twins are not named, as so many are today, with rhyming names. They do seem to have names that begin with the same letter, which any english lit major can tell you is also a form of "poesy". Here's a clue my father gave me: People who are ambidextrous have mirrow-image twins. Also, people who are ambidextrous are themselves and/or have children who are what we would today called "left-brained" and "right-brained" -- equally talented in the arts and in the sciences. He was a doctor, trained by doctors of the 1900-vintage, and matters of the brain were very intriguing to them. He would tend to break into other conversations and tell us something interesting he had heard about Twins or Brains! Apparently, there were many studies being published on both topics. Or maybe it's just that Massengills are such an intriguing bunch! According to S.E. Massengill, more Massengills lived in Johnston County NC than anywhere else. I don't know how he figured this out... our ancestors thought they weren't finished until they had about a dozen children, no matter where they were. Also, the Johnston County section of his huge book seems rather miniscule, compared to the remainder. Daddy once hinted at is that the Massengill Drug Co.'s famous douche came about to help prevent so many births AND additional births to parents who were twins themselves. So if identical twins were discouraged from having children, w/ or w/o benefit of the douche, and more Massengills live(d) in JCNC than anywhere else, do the math. annie P.S. I am copying this to the Johnston County NC RootsWebsite -- home of so many more Massengills!