The Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County is pleased to announce the recent publication of a long-awaited book about two of Clay County’s favorite painters.Prairie Daughters: The Art and Lives of Annie Stein and Orabel Thortvedt by Markus Kreuger, Mark Peihl, and Lisa Vedaa has been a decade in the making. In 2013, the year-long exhibit at the Hjemkomst Center featured the works of Annie Stein of Georgetown and Orabel Thortvedt of rural Glyndon. Both women were well known in their time frames –1872-1923 for Annie Stein and 1896-1983 for Orabel Thortvedt.

Their stories, though very different from each other, highlight lives lived for their art. Annie Stein was a self-taught painter, photographer, song-writer, and needle-worker. The middle child of nine born to Adam and Wilhelmina Stein, German immigrants among the earliest white settlers of Clay County, Annie spent her entire life on the farm. She learned photography by doing and used photos and images cut out of magazines to teach herself to paint.