Joseph A. Tinsman Sr.

First Lieutenant, U.S. Army

Company E, 26th Engineers (Water Supply), 1st Provisional Water Train

Entered the Service from: New Jersey
Died: October 1918

First Lieutenant Joseph A. Tinsman Sr. was born March 4, 1890 in Philadelphia PA. He was living in North Philadelphia and working as an assistant engineer for the Pennsylvania Department of Health in Harrisburg PA when he registered for the draft in June of 1917. He was called to service on November 17, 1917. He was married to Katherine Ormsby, of Pennsauken NJ, and they had a son, Joseph A. Tinsman Jr., born early in 1917.

Joseph Tinsman Sr. was commissioned as a First Lieutenant and assigned to the Sanitary Corps, Company E, 26th Engineers at Camp Dodge, Iowa, where he served for 6 months. He then served for a month at Camp Wheeler, Georgia. On August 17, 1918, Lieutenant Tinsman sailed from New York for Le Havre, France via Liverpool, England.

Joseph Tinsman went into action as soon as he arrived in France. Charged with overseeing a water purification unit, he was mortally wounded while rushing one of his water purification tanks over a shell-swept road between St. Pierre and Sommath, during the Battle of the Argonne Forest, in October of 1918. As Lieutenant Cromwell O. Smith of Denver CO was transferred to Company E, 26th Engineers on October 8, it is probable that Lieutenant Tinsman was killed on or shortly before that date.

Joseph A. Tinsman was survived by his wife and son, of 40 North Centre Street, Merchantville NJ, his father-in-law Edward W. Ormsby, a World War I veteran himself, of 6633 Wyndam Road, Pennsauken NJ, and a brother-in-law, Edward W. Ormsby, also of Pennsauken.

Tinsman Avenue in Pennsauken NJ was named in his honor.