"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.