Bucklin Twins in 1925

I know, I know. There are more than two people in this photo, but my focus is on my grandfather and his identical twin.  I always thought it was fascinating that my grandfather had an identical twin.  Wouldn’t that be fun?  I always thought it would be.  I suppose I had the next best thing with having several siblings and we weren’t really that far apart in age.  My younger sister and I would tell people that we were twins, and they believed it.  We were just playing around though.

My grandfather, though, had the real thing.  His name was Fred D Bucklin – the D did not stand for anything.  His identical twin’s name was Clarence Johnathan Bucklin.  Clarence had a middle name and a nickname – “CJ.”  They were born on October 2, 1907, in Roanoke, Louisiana.  The photo was taken around 1925, so they would be teenagers at the time it was taken.  

It looks like they were dressed alike, too.  That makes it even harder to tell them apart.  But I don’t think they wanted to help people tell them apart at the time.  They liked playing tricks on people about their identity.  At least that’s what my mom told me when I’d ask her about it.  She said that the teachers had a hard time telling them apart at school, so they’d give each twin a different color ribbon or arm band to wear.  That wasn’t very successful, because the twins would switch colors on the teachers and do what they wanted.  I think they were a bit of jokesters.  You can see that in this photo, where one of them is sliding his hat onto his sister Edna’s head.  She was two years younger than the twins.

My mom also said that they would pull a switch with her when she was younger, but she said it didn’t take her long to realize that it was her uncle rather than her father.  He probably had an impish smile on his face since he had pulled a fast one on her. Twins look very much alike, but there are details that you notice when you know them that helps you to tell them apart.   I would think that growing up in a household with one of them would make it easy to distinguish between the two of them.  I wasn’t there back then, so I can’t tell who is who in these old photos.  I’m not sure if there is a way to tell at this point.  I just know that the one with Grandma in the photos is my grandfather!

The interesting thing about identical twins is that their DNA is exactly the same.  If they did a DNA test, the results would show as ‘self.’  But they didn’t live long enough to participate in DNA testing.  But their daughters did.  My mom and her first cousin Carla both did a test.  When a person tests, 50% of their DNA comes from each parent.  Half comes from their dad and half from their mom.  Regular siblings have 50% from both parents, but it’s not the same pieces. Full siblings usually share around 50% with each other.  About 25% of what they have in common is from their mother, the other 25% is from their father.  If you only shared a father, half siblings would only have about 25% in common.  

First cousins share about 12.5% of their DNA.  Unless, of course, their parents are identical.  If they are truly identical, it would show up as though they were half siblings, which would be around 25%.  Well, the results of my mom and her cousin prove that Fred and Clarence were indeed identical.  Mama and Carla share 30%, which is on the high end of the scale for half siblings.  The only way that could have happened was because of the identical DNA in the brothers. 

Of course, if you just look at the photos of the two brothers you would know.  But it’s fun to see that a test can show that they were.