I’ve come to this little Cleveland suburb on a perfect sunny weekend in August for the annual twins convention. Thousands of sets of twins fly or drive from all over the world for a three-day twins party; imagine hundreds of identically dressed pairs milling around, stealing glances at one another, snapping furtive photographs of one another, eating funnel cakes, and buying buttons that say things like IT TAKES TWO TO DO TWINSBURG, or I’M THE ORIGINAL. SHE’S THE COPY, or MOM LIKES ME BEST. Twinsburg was named by the Wilcox twins, Moses and Aaron, who founded the village in 1819 and succeeded in changing its name from Millsville to Twinsburg. In exchange, they paid the township twenty dollars and donated property to build the first school. The Wilcoxes were not only indistinguishably identical; according to the municipal Web site, they “married sisters; had the same number of children; contracted the same fatal ailment; died within hours of each other and are buried in the same grave.”
