When Twins Take Over the Town

For one weekend each year, Twinsburg, Ohio, becomes the world capital of seeing double.

Photo collage by Elizabeth Renstrom with photos courtesy Donald Hayes

Moses and Aaron Wilcox purchased the town now known as Twinsburg, Ohio, in the early 1800s. According to historical records, the identical twins, who were born on May 11, 1770, in Killingworth, Connecticut, were so alike in “feature, voice and manner” that even their closest friends couldn’t tell them apart. To receive the naming rights to their new plot of land, the Wilcox brothers donated six acres at the center of town for the public square, as well as twenty dollars for the foundation of a schoolhouse. They christened the town Twinsburg in 1819.

The Wilcox brothers were inseparable. They attended the same school, worked as business partners and married sisters, Mabel and Huldah Lord, who were not twins. They each had nine children. In 1827, the Wilcox twins fell ill of the same undocumented disease and died within hours of each other. They were buried in the same grave in Twinsburg.

Although the Wilcox twins left t…