Vigo County Historical Society

Twins spawned unique photo collection

A museum is just a place filled with collections.

The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley is filled with memorabilia, the majority of which deals with Vigo County’s history.

Most of the collection was donated by local collectors. And that’s one of the most fascinating aspects of the collections--realizing what interested local collectors.

One such collector was the Rev. A.R. Brown, who was pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church from 1917 until he retired in 1935. After retirement, he continued preaching, but he also began to spend more time with his hobby, collecting.

Though he collected a number of items, including nails and coins, his most interesting collection was photographs of twins. The majority of the twins were from Vigo County, but his camera "collected" them all over the Wabash Valley, and, in some cases, the nation.

After photographing the twins, he recorded their names and home cities, then glued the photographs in a large scrapbook. The pages are grouped in order according to the first letter in the last name.

Brown’s twin collection started by chance--like so many other collectors’ collections.

In 1952, he was waiting for a bus at the corner of Seventh and Wabash. His Kodak camera was under his arm. He glanced at a confectionery store and thought he was seeing double. There were two young women, "tall and exceedingly slender, dressed exactly alike, standing in identical poses, one arm grasping the other wrist, pocketbooks dangling at the same crooked angle, heads slightly cocked in the same direction . . ."

Brown decided to snap their photographs and his collection was born. The twins he photographed were Marolyn and Carolyn Richardson of West Terre Haute.

He was 82 years old when he took that photograph. Before his death in 1959 he added almost 300 pictures of twins to his album. Of those, he photographed more than 70 within eight weeks of the first picture.

The twins ranged in age from babies to people in their 70s. A few of the shots are photographs of photographs, often of men in military uniform. A number are of two sets of twins born to the same family. Many of the twins (or perhaps their parents) chose to emphasize the identical identity by having all of their clothing match. Others chose to dress differently.

At first, Brown had to search for twins, but as word of his hobby spread, many people began to contact him. The local schools also helped by letting him know when twins were enrolled. Gerstmeyer High School provided five sets of twins at the beginning of his hobby. Lincoln School had another five.

The beginning eight weeks of photographing were confined to Terre Haute, with his daughter providing most of the transportation.

As his collection grew, so did the number of cities where twins were to be found. The twins who lived the farthest appear to be Michael and Patricia Bruce of Pasadena, Calif.

Their listing doesn’t say whether they were visiting in Terre Haute or if Brown might have been in California.

Brown even had a bit of fun with the collection at the end of the album, He included animal twins--ducks, geese, goats, dogs, cats, sheep, cows and roosters.

The dangerous time for any collection is what happens after the collector has lost interest or had died. Often years of work are lost to the auctioneer’s block or some type of sale as the collection is broken up and returned to individual pieces. Or worse, if the family feels the collection has no worth, it is consigned to the trash.

Fortunately, Brown’s collection remains in tact as a part of the museum’s collection. Certainly it remains unique, maybe the only one of its kind in the Wabash Valley, perhaps even the nation.