Georgie Sicking  Georgie Connell Sicking (May 20, 1921 – November 6, 2016) was a rancher and active participant in cowboy poetry gatherings throughout the American West. A Wyoming resident in her later years, Sicking was inducted in 1989 into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. Described as "a cowboy who just happens to be a woman", Sicking was known for her old-fashioned feminine values and self-determination. Sicking was born in rural "brush country" of west central Arizona in Seligman in Yavapai County, some forty miles from the larger city of Kingman. Her parents, Oscar C. Connell (1886-1950) and Mayne Connell, operated a ranch at Knight Creek. Her mother, who had been cooking on Dutch ovens, headed to Seligman a month before Georgia was expected to be born so that she could be rested for the delivery. However, after she reached Seligman in a Model T in a drive over rough roads, Mrs. Connell gave birth the next day, not the next month as had been expected. Because the Connells had hoped for a boy whom they would call "George", the newborn girl was instead named "Georgie". Mayne Connell taught her daughter to ride a horse at the age of two. To keep up with the child, she designed a leather harness and tied it to a tree near the house to anchor Georgie so that she would be in view. By the time she was five, Georgie had her own horse, "Buster," whom she could mount by feeding the animal a biscuit. As Buster lowered his head to eat the biscuit, Georgie would climb on his head and neck and ease down to his back. Her parents divorced by the time Sicking was in her late teens. She dropped out of school. A surviving sister, later Emma Jane Brocchini, lived with their mother. Another sister, Ada, married. Her late younger brother, Clyde, procured a ranch job. At first Georgie could not find a ranch job because she was female: "It was a country where they didn't ride mares, and they didn't hire women." Another surviving sister was Sammie Brockenbury of California. Sicking preferred to be called a cowboy, rather than a rancher, because for years she did the same kind of work as her male counterparts: "Since I was a little girl I knew I was born to be a cowboy ...