S. Fred Prince was a self-taught scientific and botanical illustrator. He worked as an illustrator for several universities in the midwest, mostly in Kansas. He left Chicago and came to the Ozarks as a bachelor homesteader in the 1880s. An artist and self-taught naturalist, he began to catalog the wonders he encountered above ground and below, in the area of Marble Cave (later Marvel Cave).

This endeavor lasted throughout his long life, and he eventually completed a remarkable body of unpublished work, including illustrated manuscripts on ferns, violets, wildflowers, insects and the cave.

While Prince lived out his life in Stone County, his works traveled far. A lengthy manuscript on ferns is in the collection of the Garden Library of Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. The Oak Spring Garden Library, Upperville, Va., owns several manuscripts, including 207 watercolors of wildflowers Prince found around Marvel Cave in the 1890s.