Chambersea

Anahuac, the county seat of Chambers County, is on the northeast bank of Trinity Bay on the Texas Gulf Coast. The earliest inhabitants of the Anahuac area were Atakapan Indians. In 1721 French explorer Jean Baptiste de La Harpe visited a village of some 200 Atakapans located between the future site of Anahuac and Round Point. The site was originally known by Anglos as Perry's point, a name attributed to Col. Henry Perry, a noted filibuster, who established a camp there in 1816. Col. John Davis Bradburn, the newly appointed Mexican commander, arrived there in October 1830 with three officers and forty men to begin construction of a fort. Gen. Manuel de Mier y Terán, commanding officer of the Mexican states of Coahuila and Texas, officially named the town Anahuac in January 1831, after the ancient capital of the Aztecs.

Fort Anahuac was the scene of incidents in 1832 and 1835 that preceded the Texas Revolution (see ANAHUAC DISTURBANCES). Although the town flourished briefly prior to the 1832 battle, the population declined dramatically afterward. A long-running civil dispute between Gen. Thomas Jefferson Chambers and Charles Willcox over ownership of the townsite began in 1838 and was not fully resolved until after the assassination of Chambers in 1865. This dispute obviously hindered the development of the town. General Chambers briefly called the town Chambersea in his own honor, but the town did not follow suit. A small Confederate outpost was established here in 1862 and was called Fort Chambers.