Ada and Minna Everleigh
Ada and Minna Everleigh were American sisters who ran the Everleigh Club, a famous and expensive brothel in Chicago’s Levee District in the early 1900s.
Ada Simms (later Ada Everleigh) was born February 15, 1864, in Greene County, Virginia. Minna Simms (Minna Everleigh) was born July 13, 1866, in the same county. They later died in Virginia and New York City, respectively (Ada in 1960 and Minna in 1948). The sisters’ glamorous backstories were part of their legend, but later researchers found their early life was less dramatic than they claimed and uncovered a more accurate history.
What happened: The sisters grew up in Virginia in a family that had once been wealthy but lost much of its fortune after the Civil War. Both sisters married men named Lester who turned out to be abusive and eventually divorced. Stranded by a theater company in Omaha, Nebraska, they changed their last name to Everleigh, a nod to an old family line, and opened their first brothel there in 1895.
During the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha, they opened a second brothel near Kountze Park and quickly increased their wealth. They later moved to Chicago and opened the high-class Everleigh Club on February 1, 1900. The club was very successful but was shut down by city authorities in 1911.
In 1905, a rival madam accused them of murdering Marshall Field Jr., though that charge did not end in conviction. After the club closed, Ada and Minna retired with a fortune of more than a million dollars and moved to the West Side of Chicago, then traveled in Europe and lived under the name Lester in New York City.
Minna died in 1948, and Ada died in 1960 in Virginia. Ada later sold many belongings and spent her final years in Virginia.
Their story still fascinates people today; in 2014, a Chicago play called Scarlet Sisters Everleigh brought their lives to the stage.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 15:35 (CET).