The extraordinary lives of two immortal women

The Court of Two Sisters at 613 Royal Street (also 615 Royal Street, 614 Bourbon Street, and 139 Royal Street) has been a renown restaurant serving Creole cuisine in one of the largest courtyards in the French Quarter for nearly a century in a structure built almost two centuries ago.

The restaurant has few photos of the eponymous Two Sisters and only vague tales of their shop of “fancy goods” with asides about special visitors getting a glimpse of the prized courtyard, which has lead to sexy speculation about the mysterious sisters.

Are they a purely myth of marketers like many Vieux Carre tales?

Do they haunt the upper floors and exact revenge on their enemies?

Were they lesbians who hid their love under the cloak of siblings like so many “good friends” of the past?

Did they provide salacious private services beyond the fancy goods offered in the shop (1886-1906), which overlapped with the Storyville era (1897-1917) and seems to have no recorded advertisements? The New Orleans guide book in the Library of Congress from 1900 goes into great detail about Royal Street, block by block, but practically skips the 600 block all together with a note about many lovely shops, one of which would have been The Two Sisters.

I have found photos and etchings of the courtyard and front of the building from before and after the shop, but very few during the time claimed by the Sisters (1886-1906).

My research into the Sisters of the Court began when my sister decided to have her wedding at the legendary restaurant in 2021. Shortly after they signed the contract, she and her husband-to-be met my husband, my parents and me to do a tasting. During our meal, our server told us several wild tales (at my prompting) about the property. Tales so unbelievable that I didn’t believe them and started digging. Along the way, I’ve learned that the French Quarter is absolutely rife with stories made for marketing and not for historical accuracy. But it turns out that the Sisters were real.

History of the Property

The story starts in 1722.

Brief Description: Lot No. 192 granted to “Jean Melain, edge tool maker, has been to the widow; then to Francois Hupee and Midas Guidaut, sailors who have sold it by contract passed before Rossard. Have sold to Antoine Leveque, shoe maker.” Marginal note: “Michel employee to Antoine Leveque, shoe maker 1732. This is where Michelle [sic], employee is.”

Collins C. Diboll Vieux Carre Digital Survey, a program of the Historic New Orleans Collection

From there the legend holds that Sieur Etienne de Perier (1678-1766), the second French royal governor of colonial Louisiana, became a resident in 1726 and that the 600 block of Royal is known as “Governor’s Row” because it was home to five governors, two state Supreme Court justices, one future justice of the US Supreme Court (Edward Douglas White 1845-1921), and Zachary Taylor, 12th president of the United States. This is the most boring part of the whole tale.

At the end of the 18th century, the French Quarter burned twice, in 1788 and then again in 1794.

The first fire started when a lace curtain licked a votive candle on a household shrine in the home of Don Vincent Jose Nunez at 619 Charters Street because of unusual wind. There were 1,100 structures comprising New Orleans and the fire claimed 856. The wind was particularly strong and a Good Friday moratorium on bells made alerting of the fire difficult. The bells had been tied down to prevent the wind from ringing them. Many of the structures were wooden and easily burned.

In 1794, playing boys mixed with north wind to ignite 212 structures, many newly built. This fire began across the street from the property of 613 Royal at what is now MS Rau Antiques.

In the Collins Diboll Digital Survey of the Vieux Carre, the record for 622 Royal Street has a note from a 1964 article by Edith E. Long:

But this spot has another and earlier claim to fame. For it was on this lot that the great fire of December 8, 1794 broke out. Of this, the Baron Carondelet report[ed] “…I am imparting to your Excellency that on the 8th of the current month, at two o’clock in the afternoon, a fire was started on Royal Street by some children, who were inadvertently playing in the patio of Don Francisco Meyonne, close to a warehouse in which hay was stored. The fire was so devastating, due to the sudden force of a violent north wind, that in less than three hours, two hundred and twelve houses, and the most valuable warehouses of the city were reduced to ashes….”

Historic New Orleans Collection Collins Diboll Digital Survey of the Vieux Carre Citations Specific to 622 Royal Street. https://www.hnoc.org/vcs/property_info.php?lot=18478 Accessed June 5, 2023.

Both fires certainly destroyed the square that houses 613 Royal Street. The present structure at 613-615 Royal was constructed several years later, in 1832, during the city’s first major economic boom and nearly 30 years into the American reign over New Orleans. The address at this time was 139 Royal Street. During the mid-1890s, the city formalized addresses into the system we know now.

The Buildings Beginnings: Before the Two Sisters

Financier Jean Baptiste Zenon Cavelier (1776-1850) built it in the French townhouse style. It is three story masonry Transitional architecture with Creole details, like the rear arches. The detailing, including the garlanded wooden cornice and the wrought iron balconies, point to the work of architects Gurlie and Guillot, according to the Collins Diboll Digital Survey of the Vieux Carre.

The upper floors, originally a family home, were converted to apartments for many years which were eventually converted to the current kitchens, dining rooms, and offices. Cavelier and his brother operated stores at 613 Royal and two doors away at 631 Royal. The Court of Two Sisters building passed out of the Cavelier family in 1854.

Between 1854 and 1886, this address is listed in the New Orleans City Directory as a variety story, fancy goods, bookkeeper, agent, dentist, hair dressers and wig makers, sewing machines, booksellers and stationers, a jeweler, and finally “shoes” before it becomes The Two Sisters. Many of these iterations have their own winding tales that surely left a few ghosts behind…

The Two Sisters

The current owners of the restaurant did extensive research into the origins of the Two Sisters of the Court in the 1990s, through which they located the family tomb in St. Louis No. 3 and revealed that Emma and Berthe Camors were the inseparable sisters.

However, their research concludes by finding the graves and determining that the influx of Italian immigrants at the time drove the old Creole family of the Sisters out of the French Quarter. The research does not indicate if they were sisters or “sisters”.

Other research into the Sisters in Stories from the St. Louis Cemeteries of New Orleans uses census records to conclude that the Sisters were actually sisters who also had a brother named Paul Camors. This book also posits that they were mulatto who went by their mother’s maiden name, Camors, instead of their father’s name, Parlongue, to disguise their true racial identity. The Sisters are buried in the Parlongue plot of St. Louis No. 3.

The server the night of my sister’s wedding tasting told us that Marie Laveau herself had practiced Voodoo at the well which is currently located in the center of the courtyard. This is the fact that got me wondering most of all…wells in the French Quarter? I’ll believe the ghost sitings and the tales of murder he also shared. I’ll believe the racism without question. But I highly doubt a well in the French Quarter.

Luckily, my research debunks all of these myths. The Sisters of the Court did not take their mother’s maiden name, they were not driven out by Italians, and they did not use a well for potable water.

Sources

• https://www.courtoftwosisters.com/about-us/our-history
• Stories from the St. Louis Cemeteries of New Orleans. Asher, Sally. Arcadia Publisher 2015.
• 1938 New Orleans City Guide. Powell, Lawrence and Works Progress Administration. Garrett County Press 2009.
• The Picayune’s Tourist’s Guide to New Orleans. 1900. Library of Congress.
• The Collins C. Diboll Vieux Carre Digital Survey, a Project of the Historic New Orleans Collection. https://www.hnoc.org/vcs/index.php
• New Orleans Public Library City Archives and Special Collections.