The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 60, July 1956 - April, 1957 Page: 368
616 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
money was used in part to pay long over-due claims of the vet-
erans of the Republic. Mier prisoners were allotted an average
of $605 as partial compensation for the horrors they had suffered.
On December 28, 1857, Major Chalk made a claim for the bal-
ance due him ($402.50) .1 This claim was allowed while he was
still living in Bell County. Chalk was awarded 320o acres of
bounty land in his home county of Milam.'7
By 1870 the state of Texas had passed an act granting a pension
to the veterans of the Texas Revolution, including an act for the
relief of the Mier prisoners. On December 13, 1870, Major Chalk,
then living in Brenham, filed an application for a pension. His
claim was denied on the technical grounds that he had not been
a Mier prisoner and had not been confined in Perote Castle. His
erstwhile Bell County friend, the Honorable George W. Tyler,
then a member of the State Senate, came to his rescue by spon-
soring a special act of the Legislature, thus securing a pension for
the old soldier.18
By 1873 Major Chalk had moved his family to the village of
Kempner in Lampasas County, where he and his wife spent the
remainder of their eventful lives. They were the parents of six
sons and three daughters. Both survived eight of their nine chil-
dren. Major Chalk died at his Lampasas County home on May
18, 19o2, at the age of ninety-two, and his wife died on January
1, 1903.
In 1944, forty-two years after his death, the federal government
honored this old hero's memory by placing at his grave at Kemp-
ner a marble marker and slab, with appropriate ceremonies.
Fittingly, Texas Independence Day was chosen for the rites. The
marker was unveiled by the then eighty-year-old Captain Martin
B. Chalk, the youngest and only surviving child of the major.
Full military services were conducted by Captain Robert Chalk
Scott, great-grandnephew of Major Chalk, with a firing squad
from Fort Hood. Colonel Oscar Reynolds, chief chaplain at Mc-
Closky General Hospital, was the principal speaker.
leChalk's claim for service, horse and equipment, Mier Expedition, $132.33.
Claim No. 1665 (MS., Public Debt Papers, Archives, Texas State Library).
l7John Burlage and J. B. Hollingsworth, Abstracts Valid Land Claims, State of
Texas (Austin, 1859), No. 148, p. 105.
l1General Laws of the State of Texas, Twenty-first Legislature, 1889, p. 77; Erath
(ed.), "Memoirs of George B. Erath," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXVII,
51n.368
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 60, July 1956 - April, 1957, periodical, 1957; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101163/m1/397/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.