He was hired as superintending engineer for construction on the Hampton Roads at Fort Calhoun and Fort Monroe becoming a superior and friend to the future general, Robert E. Lee and married Harriet Randolph Hackley at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1832. (His wife was also to become a close platonic companion to General Lee.) Talcott surveyed the Ohio-Michigan border with Lee in the spring of 1835. With the rank of Captain, he resigned his commission in 1836 and by 1839 he was a civil engineer and surveyor of the Mississippi river delta together with a young A. B. (Andrew) Gray.