[3] Beardstown is located on the Illinois River, which plays an important role in the economy and history of the community, and is the site of two grain terminals where farm products are transferred to barges for transport.

A large pork slaughterhouse, formerly owned by Kraft and Cargill now by JBS, is a major employer and has attracted a substantial immigrant population to Beardstown in recent years.

Her book, Global Heartland: Displaced Labor, Transnational Lives and Local Placemaking, discusses the economic and political forces that brought emigrants and immigrants to Beardstown.

Beardstown was first settled by Thomas Beard in 1819; he erected a log cabin at the edge of the Illinois River, from which he traded with the local Native Americans and ran a ferry.

The Beardstown Courthouse was the site of a famous trial which helped build Abraham Lincoln's reputation as a lawyer after he used a copy of a farmer's almanac to undermine the credibility of the prosecution's key witness.

For six straight years they were honored by the National Association of Investors Corp's "All-Star Investment Clubs".

In 1993, they produced their first home video for investors called, The Beardstown Ladies: Cooking Up Profits on Wall Street.

By 1994, they wrote their first book, The Beardstown Ladies' Common-Sense Investment Guide, which sold over 800,000 copies by 1998 and was a New York Times Best Seller.

The seeds of scandal were planted in late 1998: a Chicago magazine noticed that the group's returns included the fees the women paid every month.

An article in The Wall Street Journal led the ladies to hire an outside auditor, which proved they had indeed misstated their returns.