MAY 2025 Ghost Towns and History of Montana Newsletter From The Herald News, May 5, 1949 , MONTANA COWBOY HALL OF FAME M C H F L e g a c y I n d u c t e e GEORGE W. “MAC” & ANNA (ATOR) “ANNIE” MCCOY DISTRICT 1 - YEAR 2025 In 1898, recognizing ranching and grazing opportunities that would soon open up in northeastern Montana, George and Anna (Ator) McCoy made the decision to move their young family from the Stanford area of the Judith Basin in central Montana, to what would eventually become Sheridan County, Montana. By 1899, George, Accessed via: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ nicknamed “Mac” and Anna, known as “Annie,” were among the first white settlers to put down roots in the area north of present-day Plentywood, Montana, and thus began a fourgeneration family legacy of Montana farming and ranching. Mac was born in 1869, near Brighton, Iowa to James and Laura (Nelson) McCoy. When he was four years old, his father died of complications from wounds suffered during the Civil War. At the age of 13, having been orphaned by the death of his mother, Mac went west to the Judith Basin with his older cousin, George Bain. Several of Mac’s Bain relatives had established ranches in the Judith Basin and it was from them that he learned the
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