Georgia O'Keeffe's Birthplace

Leaving the Sun Prairie Historical Library & Museum, head east on Main Street for 0.4 miles. Turn right onto County Hwy N / Grove Street and proceed for 2.6 miles. Turn left onto County Road T and proceed approximately 1 mile toward the junction with Town Hall Drive. Just before the junction with Town Hall Drive, the white home on your right at 2407 County Road T has a small marker noting the site as Georgia O’Keeffe’s birthplace.

A home belonging to the Tottos, Georgia’s maternal grandparents, existed on the site in 1873. After their marriage in 1884, Georgia’s parents, Ida and Francis O’Keeffe, moved to the site and either rebuilt or expanded the structure.^[1] The home was a generously proportioned frame house with large rooms and a substantial barn. Georgia reportedly remembered hay loads at dusk, wagons slowly winding down the road, apple trees she loved to climb, the crunch of snow at night, an enormous round moon coming up over the woods, the little low place in the meadow where she played alone, and the blue sky overhead.^[2] The original home was sold by the O’Keeffes in 1903 when they moved to Williamsburg, Virginia and was destroyed by accidental fire in 1976.

The Village of Sun Prairie was first settled in 1839 and experienced steady growth in the late 1850s when the Wisconsin and Baraboo railroad laid tracks to the town. By 1890, the village had a population of some 700 people, with an emerging downtown district that was the center of commerce for the surrounding agricultural area, whose population numbered an additional several hundred. Sun Prairie was a modernizing community during the 1890s with a new City Hall, electrification, and waterworks. The O’Keeffes had one of the first telephones in the area after Georgia’s father lobbied other farmers to dig the necessary post holes.^[3]

By the time Francis and Ida O’Keeffe made their home on this site in 1884, the O’Keeffe family had established an extensive farming and cattle business in what had become known as the “O’Keeffe Neighborhood.” The O’Keeffe home not only housed Georgia's immediate family, but extended to farm help and local teachers of the Town Hall School just across the road. A notable figure in Georgia’s youth was her great-aunt on her mother’s side, Eliza Jane Wyckoff Varney, known as “Auntie” to the children. After traveling to California with her husband in a covered wagon and her husband’s subsequent death under unknown circumstances, Auntie had relocated back to Wisconsin and was an authoritative presence for the children.

Georgia’s mother was an independent person who was socially active in the community. Ida O'Keeffe was a member of the 20th Century Club, an organization promoting civic improvements and oriented toward women having a stronger role in society. During her youth, Ida instilled a yearning for her daughters to achieve their full potential and individualism.^[4] She would entertain neighbors at the home; one visit by a Mrs. Crippen left a lasting impression on Georgia. Mrs. Crippen had some new books that she left for the O’Keeffes and Georgia was struck by a small pen and ink drawing of a girl with beads around her neck titled “The Maid of Athens.” Later she would say “I believe that picture started something moving in me that has had to do with the everlasting urge that makes me keep on painting.”^[5]

Georgia had a room of her own in the house. As related by Anita Pollitzer, her college friend: “Hers was a nice room with gray-painted furniture, trimmed in blue with roses and pansies. She remembers that there was no rose on the bureau where she could have seen it, only pansies; but there was the rose on the top of the bed, where she could not see it. It troubled her, she says, and she would think and think about it as she lay in bed at night. She always wondered if that was the start of what she later called her "flower life.""^[6]

As the 1900s began, Francis O’Keeffe began to consider leaving farming as an occupation. The April 23, 1903, edition of Sun Prairie’s Star Countryman newspaper noted; “Francis O’Keefe returned Monday after a several weeks’ visit in Virginia seeking a location to make his future home. Mrs. O’Keefe accompanied him on the trip and remained at Williamsburg, Va., to await the return of her husband with the rest of the family. Mr. O’Keefe purchased 132 acres of land within the city limits of Williamsburg, which is a city of 3,000 inhabitants, and the location of the county seat and state asylum. Here also is Williamsburg college with an attendance of 1000 students. Mr. O’Keefe expresses himself as well pleased with Virginia and says evidences of prosperity are on every hand.”^[7]

The original O’Keeffe home was sold and remained a private residence until 1976 when a fire caused by a candle left burning in the house destroyed the structure.^[8] A new private residence now sits on the site with a small sign indicating “Birthplace of Georgia O’Keeffe – Artist.”

^[1] Reily, Nancy Hopkins. Georgia O'Keeffe, a Private Friendship, Part I - Walking the Sun Prairie Land. Sunstone Press. Santa Fe, NM, 2007, p. 34.

^[2] Pollitzer, Anita. A Woman on Paper: Georgia O’Keeffe. Simon & Schuster Inc., New York, NY, 1988, p. 54.

^[3] Pollitzer, p. 56.

^[4] Reily, p. 40.

^[5] Pollitzer, p. 65.

^[6] Pollitzer, p. 61.

^[7] Star Countryman (Sun Prairie) April 23, 1903.

^[8] Star Countryman (Sun Prairie) November 11, 1976. "O’Keeffe” was frequently spelled “O’Keefe” into the early 1900s.