No Hope for Heaven, No Fear of Hell ― The Stafford-townsend Feud of Colorado County, Texas, 1871-1911

The Stafford-Townsend feud began with an 1871 shootout in Columbus, Texas, followed by the deaths of the Stafford brothers in 1890. The second phase blossomed after 1898 with the assassination of Larkin Hope, and concluded in 1911 with the violent deaths of Marion Hope, Jim Townsend, and Will Clements, all in the space of one month.

“[Y]ou will find this book endlessly fascinating, filled with gunfights, ambushes, unexplained deaths, murder, juries allowing culprits to go free, and all sorts of skullduggery within the law enforcement community, since many of the sheriffs were related to one combatant or another. Anger, resentment, revenge, hard feelings, and smoldering payback fill these pages.”—Chronicle of the Old West

JAMES C. KEARNEY teaches at the University of Texas in Austin and is the author of Nassau Plantation; co-editor of Journey to Texas, 1833; and translator and editor of Friedrichsburg: The Colony of the German Fürstenverein. BILL STEIN was director and archivist at the Nesbitt Memorial Library in Columbus. JAMES SMALLWOOD was the author of more than twenty books on Texas history.