Part 8

Part 8, Note 65

Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 984: State of Texas v. Ben F. Gee, Criminal Cause File No. 993: State of Texas v. George S. Walton, Criminal Cause File No. 995: State of Texas v. Colonel S. Stoudenmier, Criminal Cause File No. 1073: State of Texas v. Nat Morris, Criminal Cause File No. 1102: State of Texas v. O. M. McKinney, Criminal Cause File No. 1135: State of Texas v. O. M. McKinney, Criminal Cause File No. 1608: State of Texas v. Thomas A. Woolridge; Fayette County New Era, May 16, 1873, September 19, 1873; Colorado Citizen, October 26, 1871, April 8, 1875. "Colonel" was Stoudenmier's first name; not a title. He was the brother of the celebrated El Paso marshal Dallas Stoudenmier, who is said by his biographer, Leon Claire Metz, to have engaged in gunplay in Colorado County during these years. No evidence of any gun battle involving Dallas Stoudenmier in Colorado County has been found. In fact, Dallas Stoudenmier lived in Fayette County in 1870. Metz based his statements on second-hand reports of interviews with persons in 1965, or nearly one hundred years after the incidents might have occurred. It is possible that the people interviewed in 1965 confused the Stoudenmier brothers, attributing Colonel Stoudenmier's difficulties with George Walton to Dallas. Though it is likely that no one alive in 1965 had a direct memory of the otherwise obscure Stoudenmier family in Colorado County, memories of the family might have been passed down after a biographical sketch of Dallas Stoudenmier was included in Eugene Cunningham's 1934 book, Triggernometry. Both Cunningham and Metz spell the name "Stoudenmire." The spelling used herein is that on the marriage licenses of both Stoudenmier brothers and that on Colonel Stoudenmier's tombstone. He died on July 10, 1927, and is buried in Llano, Texas. Dallas Stoudenmier was killed in an El Paso gunfight on September 18, 1882. He had gotten married in Colorado County only seven months earlier. His body was shipped to Alleyton for burial. Though the precise site of the grave has long been forgotten, in November 1998, a man named Charles "Red" Underhill erected a tombstone for the former marshal in the Alleyton Cemetery (see Metz, Dallas Stoudenmire: El Paso Marshal, pp. 29-30; Cunningham, Triggernometry (New York: The Press of the Pioneers, 1934), pp. 171-188; Dallas Stoudenmire Vertical File, Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus, which contains xerographic copies of both marriage certificates and the relevant page from the 1870 census of Fayette County; Colorado Citizen, February 16, 1882; Colorado County Citizen, December 28, 1994, November 25, 1998).