Joseph's father, Edward, though a man of modest means, was a close friend of a statesman of the American Revolution, John Hancock. Joseph was a Harvard College classmate friend of William Ellery Channing.

He accepted the call to be pastor of the farming village of Chelsea outside Boston. His wife, Abigail Parkman, mother of their three children, died after four years. Aside from his ministry to all the families in town, he provided special assistance to seamen. In 1924 Harvard College honored him as a Doctor of Divinity.

After serving in Chelsea for twenty-five years, he devoted the rest of his life to a pioneering urban ministry-at-large, serving the poor in the city of Boston, with support from the American Unitarian Association. The Benevolent Fraternity of Churches was formed in 1834, to carry on such work, which is now named the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry.

Doctor Tuckerman's action to advance urban social work and social action inspired community service in some other towns and cities. In the early twenty-first century, there are a rapidly growing number of Unitarian Universalist clergy in community ministry rather than in parish ministry or ministry of religious education.
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