"THOMAS JEFFERSON CHAMBERS" - Biography by Norm Penick

Thomas Jefferson Chambers was a Virginia lawyer who immigrated to Texas. He went to Mexico City to become educated in Mexican law and returned to Texas as a representative of the Mexican government. He was Texas' first Attorney General and was a primary framer of the Texas constitution as well as a large part of the original body of Texas jurisprudence. He was sent to Washington D.C. during the Texas revolution to request artillery and uniforms for the Texas revolutionary army but wasn't able to secure same until the revolution was over. The uniforms were distributed to veterans of the revolution who were essentially threadbare and destitute. Two of the canons were (and are still) used to ornament the entrance to the Artillery Club in Galveston, the oldest private club in the State of Texas. Chambers was known as a bloody man on account of his success at dueling. When he returned to his homestead in Anahuac, after the revolution and his mission to the U.S. Congress, he found a squatter family on his property. He challenged the squatter to a duel and subsequently shot the man to death. Chambers was later shot to death himself while sitting with his family on the veranda of his home in Anahuac. The assassin was never apprehended. Chambers plantation house is still in Anahuac and is in good condition. It's a beautiful and unusual old house with a single staircase outside on the north veranda spiraling to up to the second floor. The gables in either end of the house have a large "Texas Star", as they used to tell us. The house has single walls and is only one room deep - a long narrow house built in the Gulf Coast style to utilize the gulf breezes. It's a great example of an early Texas plantation house and a Gulf Coast house. Members of the Chambers family are buried here in Wallisville and down in Galveston but there are no Chambers family members living in Chambers County.