Born at Ledyard, Connecticut, Talbot came from Colonial and Revolutionary ancestry of English, Scotch and Irish descent.
At the age of sixteen, he "went into the world for himself", working on farms in Connecticut and Nevada to earn money with which to complete his education.
[2] From 1875 until 1879 he pursued special courses of study in higher mathematics, physics, Latin, political economy and science of government at Dickinson Seminary, Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
[2] Notable among his opinions, sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States, is the one in the Boyce case, upholding an act of the Legislature providing for an eight-hour day for men laboring in mines, smelters and ore-reduction works.
In Nash v. McNamara, involving the construction of Federal statutes relating to the right of re-location of mineral lands upon the public domain, he declined to follow the rule laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States in the 1905 case of Lavagnino v. Uhlig;[3] the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1908 case of Farrell v. Lockhart,[4] modified its views to conform with the reasoning provided by Talbot in Nash.