He founded the community of Port Talbot, Ontario, which was at one time the most prosperous town in the region due to his insistence on building quality roads, and was responsible for enticing 50,000 people to settle in the Thames River area.

Talbot received a commission in the army as ensign before he was twelve years old, and was appointed at sixteen to aid his relative, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

After returning to England, Talbot convinced the government to allow him to implement a land settlement scheme along the shore of Lake Erie.

[4] Here he ruled as an absolute, if erratic, potentate, doling out strips of land to people of his choosing, a group that emphatically did not include supporters of the American Revolution, liberals or anyone insufficiently respectful.

[6] By the late 1820s Colonel Thomas Talbot had organized the construction of a 300-mile-long (480 km) road linking the Detroit River and Lake Ontario as part of a grand settlement enterprise in the south western peninsula.

[9] According to returns placed before the House of Assembly in 1836, title to some 5,280,000 acres (21,400 km2) located in twenty-nine townships had at one time gone through his hands.

[citation needed] He was infamous for registering settlers' names on the local settlement map in pencil and if displeased, was alleged to have erased their entry.

Eventually, however, he began to make political demands on the settlers, after which his power was reduced by the provincial government.