Tyler County, West Virginia    Biography of Ezbai W. TALBOTT

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Submitted by Valerie Crook, <vfcrook@earthlink.net>, March 1999
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., 
Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 33

EZBAI W. TALBOTT has been a river man nearly all his
active life, had steamboat runs over all the great rivers of
the Mississippi basin, but for a number of years past has been
permanently located at Sistersville, where he is proprietor
of the Wharfboat.

Mr. Talbott was born in Missouri, but is a member of
an old family of the Upper Ohio Valley. His grandfather,
Richard Talbott, was born in Brooke County, West Virginia,
and spent most of his life there, having a farm. He died
at Proctor, West Virginia. Richard Hardesty Talbott,
father of E. W. Talbott, was born in Brooke County in 1824,
was reared there, established his home in Wellsburg as a
young man, and became a steamboat official. In 1848 he
removed to Pike County, Missouri, near the Mississippi
River, and owned a large farm there. In 1866 he returned
to West Virginia, established his home in Marshall County
on a farm, and in 1866 moved to the vicinity of Sistersville,
buying a farm across the river in Monroe County, Ohio.
He lived on this farm until his death in 1883. He was a
democrat in politics and a member of the Cumberland
Presbyterian Church. Richard H. Talbott married Mary
Wells, who was born at Wells Bottom in Marshall County,
West Virginia, in 1834, and died at Sistersville in 1908.
She was the mother of eight children: Rolla, a farmer who
died in Pike County, Missouri, at the age of thirty-two;
Charles P., who died on the homestead farm in Monroe
County, Ohio, at the age of fifty-three; John R., a farmer at
North Jackson, Ohio; Ezbai W.; Frank M., now living on
the old homestead in Monroe County; Dora Virginia, wife
of Frank D. McCoy, a retired merchant at Sistersville;
Mary, who became the wife of George Durham, for many
years a cashier of the Tyler County Bank of Sistersville, and
who died at Garden City, New York, where his widow still
lives; and Lucian Hardesty, owner and operator of a public
garage at Sistersville.

Ezbai W. Talbott was born in Pike County, Missouri
October 29, 1860, and was six years of age when the family
returned to West Virginia. He attended the public schools
of Sistersville, Duff's Business College in Pittsburgh, and the
high school at New Martinsville, West Virginia. Leaving
school at the age of twenty-one, Mr. Talbott became a mate
on steamboats plying on the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri
rivers, and later took out papers as a captain. For many
years he was on the river as a steamboat man, well known
in river transportation circles, but most of the time kept
his home at Sistersville, though he also lived at other places
along the river. In 1908 Mr. Talbott bought the Wharfboat
at Sistersville, and this has been his chief interest ever since.
He also became part owner and manager of the Sistersville
Ferry Company, owning the ferry between Sistersville and
Ply, Ohio, and he is still financially interested in this company.
Mr. Talbott is a director of the First-Tyler Bank & Trust
Company of Sistersville.

A well thought of and public spirited citizen, he was a
member of the Sistersville City Council six years. He votes
as a democrat, is a member of the Knights of Pythias, and
owns one of the modern homes of the town, at 419 Wells
Street.

In 1897, in Monroe County, Ohio, Mr. Talbott married
Miss Nettie May Witten, daughter of James and Prances
(Bridgeman) Witten, now deceased. Her father was one
of the famous river pilots of his day, and conducted a number
of the well known river steamers up and down the Ohio and
Mississippi from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. Mr. and Mrs.
Talbott have two daughters, Mary Frances, wife of Sam
Fisher, part owner of the Paden City Glass Company and a
resident of New Martinsville, and Miss Camilla who grad-
uated from a college at Jenkinstown, Pennsylvania.