Home of Thomas Jefferson Chambers
Anahuac, Chambers County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1802 - 1865) Surveyor general of Texas, 1829; sole superior judge of Texas before 1836; active in the cause of independence; member of Secession Convention, 1861. Chambersea, later Anahuac, and a Texas county were named in his honor.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Thomas Jefferson Chambers (1802–1865) was one of early Texas's most consequential officials, serving as surveyor general in 1829 and as the sole superior judge before independence. An active champion of the independence cause, he later sat in the 1861 Secession Convention as Texas left the Union. A town—Chambersea, later Anahuac—and a Texas county still carry his name.
Why it matters
Chambers's career spans the arc from Mexican Texas through independence to secession, mapping the political transformations that shaped the young state's identity.
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Related people
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Nearby & related markers
Chambersea
Anahuac, TX
Built in 1845, Chambersea was the home of Thomas Jefferson Chambers, an early Texas civic and business leader who proclaimed his devotion to the state with a "Star" window in the west gable. The modest board-and-batten house featured a distinctive spiral exterior stairway and sat at the center of a plantation with barns, outbuildings, and a lattice summer house. The home's story turned dark in 1863, when Chambers was assassinated here.
Chambers County Courthouse
Anahuac, TX
Chambers County, named for Texas pioneer Major General Thomas Jefferson Chambers, was organized in 1858 with its seat at Wallisville. In 1908, after rice canals and wandering hogs helped tip an election, Anahuac won the county seat; its 1912 Renaissance Revival courthouse burned in 1935. The current three-story limestone building, blending Art Deco and Moderne styles, rose in 1937 with funding from the New Deal's Public Works Administration and remains little changed today.
Events at Anahuac Leading to the Texas Revolution
Anahuac, TX
In the spring of 1832, Col. Juan Bradburn, commanding the Mexican garrison at Anahuac, jailed William B. Travis, Patrick C. Jack, and other American colonists and refused to hand them over for civil trial. Alarmed settlers rallied at Liberty and marched on Anahuac, and when Bradburn broke his promise to free the prisoners, they sent to Brazoria for men and cannon—precipitating the Battle of Velasco on June 26. The standoff ended when the Mexican commander from Nacogdoches released the colonists and arrested Bradburn.
Anahuac's First Cemetery
Anahuac, TX
Established in the early 1830s while Texas was still under Mexican rule, this burial ground—long known as the Old Mexican Cemetery—holds some of the first settlers of the fledgling community of Anahuac. The earliest documented interment is land-office agent and merchant Benjamin Freeman, who died in 1835, on the eve of the Texas Revolution. Many of the pioneers laid to rest here lie in unmarked graves, a common fate on a raw frontier where stone monuments were a luxury.