Isaac Chalker, second son and fifth child of Lieutenant Abraham and Deborah (Barber) Chalker, was born in Saybrook, Connecticut, September 12, 1707.
He studied theology, and before he was ordained over any parish married and had a family. In 1734, being then resident on Long Island, he was called to the charge of the Presbyterian churches of Bethlehem and Wallkill, now included in the townships of Cornwall and Montgomery, in Orange County, New York, over which he was ordained by the Presbytery of East Jersey. From the first there was dissatisfaction, owing to the manner in which he was introduced; and after the extremely cold winter of 1741-2, in which he was very unfortunate in losing all his stock of cattle and a negro man servant, his position became more difficult to maintain. Early in 1743, 'by occasion of great and extreme differences and disorders arising in religious matters,' he obtained a dismission, and in December of the same year he was invited, by a vote of twenty-six to seventeen, to preach as a candidate in Eastbury, a small and poor society (now Buckingham) in the eastern part of Glastonbury, Connecticut. He was soon after regularly called to settle, on a salary of .£300 a year, by a vote of thirty-seven to eighteen, and in October, 1744, was installed pastor. Losses of property before leaving Bethlehem, and a series of subsequent adverse providences involved him so deeply in debt that in October, 1748, he was forced to appeal to the General Assembly for aid. The Assembly loaned him on proper security £650, old tenor, free of interest, for a year's time. From another memorial to the Assembly, six years later, it appears that he was still deeply in debt, and a tax was laid on the unimproved lands in his parish for the repayment of the government.
He died in office, May 28, 1765, in his 58th year, leaving an insolvent estate; the inventory of his effects credits him with a library of forty-seven volumes and about as many pamphlets.
By a first marriage he had eight children. He married in 1762, Sarah, daughter of Abel and Susannah (Kilbour) Morley, of Glastonbury, who was born June 23, 1720. She is said to have borne him two children. She next married, December 17, 1771, Benjamin Judd."
