Texas History and Genealogy - presented by Genealogy Trails

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/CC/hcc9.html (accessed May 15, 2007). (NOTE: "s.v." stands for sub verbo, "under the word.")

Karankawa, Coapite, and Copane Indians lived in the area when the first expeditions traveled the lower Trinity River. The land that became Chambers County formed part of the Atascosito (or lower Trinity River) District, a subdivision of Nacogdoches in Spanish Texas.^qv

By the late seventeenth century the French intruded on Spanish interests by trading with the Indians as far as the Sabine. By the early 1800s, Alabama and Coushatta Indians had arrived in the area from Alabama, assimilated the local Bidais and Orcoquizas, taken over their livestock trade with settlers along the Atascosito Road,^qv and planted crops.

Mexican influence in the area increased after the Mexican war of independence^qv from Spain in 1821, and Mexican place names replaced many earlier designations. In 1825 Perry's Point, the principal port of entry for the colonial grant, was renamed Anahuac.

In the 1840s, the western edge of the future county was developed. Among those who acquired land was Sam Houston,^qv who established a home at Cedar Point around 1837. The first post office was established at Anahuac, then known as Chambersea, in 1844. When the area became part of Liberty County after independence, land quarrels broke out, among them the notorious conflict between Charles Willcox^qv and Chambers, who, with property valued at more than half a million dollars by 1860, was the county's wealthiest resident.

The county seat is Anahuac. The county is named for Thomas Jefferson Chambers, an early lawyer in Texas.