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, and died in Charlottesville, Virginia on January 5, 1960. Minna was born in Greene County on July 13, 1866 and died in New York City on September 16, 1948. Biography Alternative biography The sisters claimed an alternative biography, which has long been accepted as factual. Better research has provided more accuracy. 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 17, 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 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 George Warren "Montgomery" and Virginia "Jennie" Madison 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. Both sisters were married but subsequently divorced. 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 sought a more affluent city. In 1899, they settled in Chicago, and on 1 February 1900, opened