Joseph Batchelder Tupper was born on November 6, 1846, in Campton, New Hampshire, to Roswell Tupper and Ann Church. His father was a sawyer who owned $2,000 of real estate by 1850. He grew up and attended school in Campton, and by 1860, he was working as a domestic laborer on the farm of George and Deborah Keniston.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on August 11, 1862, and he mustered in as a private in Company E of the 12^th New Hampshire Infantry on September 5. The regiment took part in the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Chancellorsville. He was wounded in the left hand at Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863. Army officials transferred him to the 52^nd New Hampshire Infantry on November 15, 1863, and he mustered out on July 7, 1865.

 

He settled in Lynn, Massachusetts, after the war. He applied for a federal pension in February 1866 and eventually secured one. He married Susan M. Warner on November 30, 1871, and the couple apparently had no children. He earned a living as a leather cutter. His wife died in 1909. He remained in Lynn, and by 1910, he was living with a “house keeper” named Edith Ward. He married a woman named Margaret in the 1910s, and they had at least two children: Joseph, born around 1918; and Olive, born around 1920. Tupper died in Lynn on December 29, 1923.

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