John Coffin Talbot was born in East Machias, Maine on October 13, 1784, a descendant of Revolutionary War Captain Peter Talbot who had moved to East Machias from Stoughton, Massachusetts in 1773.
A prominent citizen of East Machias, Talbot filled various municipal offices before representing that town in the Maine House of Representatives in 1825 and again in 1831.
In 1832 he was elected to the State Senate and reelected in 1833. Returning to the Senate in 1836 and 1837 he was elected President of the Senate in the latter year.
A Judge of Probate, he was the father of John C. Talbot, Jr., a successful Washington County lawyer, Speaker of the Maine House and unsuccessful candidate for Governor in 1876.
The elder Talbot died in East Machias in 1860 at the age of seventy-six, having built a considerable fortune in the lumber business.
Of equal interest to the Talbots in Maine history was the family of the elder Talbot’s wife, Mary Foster. Her father was the old war horse, Colonel Benjamin Foster, who had fought with Sir William Pepperell at Louisburg and who engineered the fist naval engagement of the Revolutionary War which ended in the capture of the British armed schooner, Margaretta, at Machias on June 12, 1775.