Ada and Minna Everleigh
Ada and Minna Everleigh, born Ada and Minna Simms, were two sisters who operated the Everleigh Club, a high-priced brothel in the Levee District of Chicago during the first decade of the twentieth century. Ada, the eldest, was born in Greene County, Virginia on February 15, 1864,[1] and died in Charlottesville, Virginia on January 5, 1960.[2] Minna was born in Greene County on July 13, 1866[1] and died in New York, New York on September 16, 1948.
Biography
Alternative biography
The sisters claimed an alternative biography, which has long been accepted as factual. Karen Abbott has debunked their story.[3]
According to their story, Minna and Ada Simms were born outside of Louisville, Kentucky in 1876 to a wealthy lawyer who had fled to Kentucky from Virginia when Benedict Arnold invaded Virginia in 1781. The two sisters had been to finishing school and had proper social debuts. When Minna was seventeen, she says, she married a man whose last name was Lester who turned out to be abusive. Ada claimed to have been married to Lester's brother, who also turned out to be abusive. After both marriages had failed, they became actresses. Claiming their father died in the early 1890s, they said they came into a legacy of $35,000.
Early life
According to Abbott, whose research included an interview with the sisters' great niece, Minna and Ada were born in Greene County, Virginia to Montgomery Simms, the second and third of four daughters. Their mother died when they were young, as did their sisters. There were three brothers, who all survived to adulthood. Although the family was wealthy at the time of their birth, they lost much of their wealth during the Civil War and the family lost their plantation when they couldn't pay their taxes.[4] There is no proof that either sister was ever married.
Later life
Stranded by a theater company in Omaha, Nebraska, the sisters changed their last name to "Everleigh," adapted from their grandmother's habit of signing letters with "Everly Yours" and opened their first brothel in Omaha in 1895. When the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition was held in Omaha in 1898 they opened a second brothel in the vicinity of the event in Kountze Park and quickly doubled their investment. They then decided to close their brothels and seek out a more affluent city.[5]
By 1900 they settled in Chicago and opened a high class brothel called the Everleigh Club which did good business until closed down in 1911. At the time it was closed by the city authorities Ada was 47 and Minna 45. They then retired and moved to New York.
Minna Everleigh died in 1948.[6] After Minna's death, Ada Everleigh sold most of her personal belongings and moved to Virginia.[6] Ada Everleigh died in 1960 at the age of 93.[6]
Notes
- 1 2 Abbott 2007, p. 4.
- ↑ Abbott 2007, p. 296.
- ↑ Abbott 2007, pp. 23–46.
- ↑ Wendt & Kogan 1974, pp. 320–322.
- ↑ Inghamn, J. (1983), Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders, Greenwood Press, p. 354.
- 1 2 3 Louise Kiernan. "The Everleigh Club". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved January 26, 2016.
References
- Abbott, Karen (2007), Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul, Random House, ISBN 978-1-4000-6530-1.
- Asbury, Herbert (1940). Gem of the Prairie. Knopf.
- Wendt, Lloyd; Kogan, Herman (1974). Bosses in Lusty Chicago (a.k.a. Lords of the Levee). Indiana University Press. pp. 320–322. ISBN 0-253-20109-8.
- Hibbeler, Ray (1960), Upstairs at the Everleigh Club, Volitant Books.
- Masters, Edgar Lee (April 1944), "The Everleigh Club", Town & Country.
- Wallace, Irving (1965), The Sunday Gentleman, Simon & Schuster.
- Wallace, Irving (1988), The Golden Room.
- Washburn, Charles (1936), Come Into My Parlor: A Biography of the Aristocratic Everleigh Sisters of Chicago, Knickerbocker Publishing.