Thomas Jefferson Chambers

Thomas Jefferson Chambers (March 22, 1840 – May 24, 1929) was a newspaper editor and Texan politician who served in the Texas House from 1870 to 1873.

Early life Chambers was born on March 22, 1840. In 1858, Chambers married Mittie Smith. They had five children.

Thomas Jefferson Chambers was a nephew of Chambers County, Texas, namesake Gen. Thomas Jefferson Chambers of the Texas Army during its war for independence. and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives. He began his career in newspapers as a teenager working at a paper in his native Virginia before moving to Liberty with his family and working at the original Liberty Gazette, founded by Henry Shea in 1855.

Jeff Chambers bought the Gazette from Shea in 1857 or 1858 and operated it himself while still in his teens. He published the Gazette until 1869, but for the period of the Civil War, in which he served in the Confederate Army and was twice captured.

In the 1870s, he published The Observer in Liberty for several years.

Finally, in December 1887, Chambers began his last newspaper venture, The Liberty Vindicator, which remains in publication today as The Vindicator.