Sepia Saturday 153 Lady of Beardstown

Today I share an unknown,  to us, woman in a photo from the collection of Jerry's late Aunt Marie.  There were no names nor year noted and no one seems to know who she is/was. 

It was a professional studio photo taken by "Berniece of The New Shoemaker Studio in Beardstown" so noted on the cardboard folder. 
She is attractive posed  in somewhat formal attire, long skirt with one foot upon the bottom of the  post, her  necklace looks as though it might be carved from some stone, onyx or?  What was the occasion for the photo?  The sleeves of her blouse echo the folded fabric on the posts.  My guess is this might have been in the 1940's.  What was happeing then in Beardstown?

I googled the Shoemaker Studio  and learned that it was founded by M R Shoemaker and thrived for over 50 yearsuntil his 1939 sudden death. I googled  Beardstown which is in  west central Illinois and learned some of its interesting history thinking that might give me a clue, it did not.  I have never before heard of the town but post what I learned here.
 Beardstown, located on the Illinois River was founded by Thomas Beard, from Granville, New York, when he started a ferry service crossing the river in 1826. By 1834 it was a growing port that shipped grain, hogs, and provisions to the interior of the state and downriver to markets. Beardstown became known as "Porkopolis" because of its stockyards and slaughterhouses, where more than 50,000 hogs were processed annually.  Beard's license authorized him to charge $.75 for a wagon and four horses (or oxen), $.37 1/2 for a cart and horse, $.05 per head of cattle, and $.06 1/4 for a pedestrian, among other tolls. The ferry ran until 1888, when a private wooden toll bridge was built. In 1898 the city built a steel toll bridge that afforded the town revenue until 1955, when the state built a bridge a mile south. In the mid-nineteenth century steamboats were built at Beardstown. A plank road was built between Beardstown and Bluff Springs to the east, to cover a swampy area that impeded wagon trade over the otherwise clay surface of the area.

The railroad came to Beardstown in 1869 with the laying of the Rockford, Rock Island, and St. Louis Railroad track. Beardstown was an important division point where engines and crews changed on the Galesburg to East St. Louis run and where the branch, or "jack," line to Centralia merged.
At the turn of the century, the Beardstown Fish Company frequently reported catches of between 50,000 and 100,000 pounds of fish. Black bass, carp, buffalo, crappie, eel, catfish, frogs, and turtles were caught, sold, and shipped from Beardstown. Fishing declined as the river became polluted and levees were built, draining lakes.

Another short-lived industry was mussel and freshwater pearl fishing. Button factories opened along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers in the 1890s. Hundreds in the Beardstown area were given employment shelling mussels and selling their shells and pearls to commercial buyers. Prices as high as $1,500 for a large pearl were not unusual. Irregularly shaped pearls, called "slugs," sold for as much as a hundred dollars. By 1909 local shell beds had been played out. They were rejuvenated by the 1970s, when prices per ton were high enough for a few shellers to work the beds again. The shells are sold to Japan, to be ground up into "seeds" for oyster pearls.  I have heard of this industry  near here along the Mississippi River in Iowa. 

A third industry, ice cutting, was prosperous until 1909, when the first plant making artificial ice was installed. Ice was packed in sawdust and stored in large icehouses to be sold locally in the summer months, and it was also shipped out by the train-carload.

Today it is the site of two grain terminals where farm products are transferred to barges for transport. A large Cargill meat processing plant is a major employer and has attracted a substantial immigrant population to Beardstown in recent years. By the 2010 US census it had a population of slightly over 6000.

So who was she and what was she doing in Beardstown, all dressed for a gala?

For others posts on this long holiday weekend here in the states, go to the Sepia site at this link
   http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2012/11/sepia-saturday-153-24-november-2012.html