Tarbell was laid down on 31 December 1917 at Philadelphia by William Cramp & Sons Ship & Engine Building Company.

Tarbell served on the Asiatic Station until mid-1921, when she returned to the Pacific Fleet with her home yard at Puget Sound.

She operated in the Atlantic with the Neutrality Patrol for over two years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor jolted the United States into the war.

A Socony tanker, Dixie Arrow, was torpedoed off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and Tarbell's lookouts sighted her distress flares a little before 0900.

To assure that those French ships were not turned over to the Germans and that, in accordance with the Panama Declaration, there be no transfer of European possessions in America to any non-American power, she was assigned a patrol area around Pointe-à-Pitre, Grand Terre Island, Guadeloupe, and her specific charge was the old training cruiser Jeanne D'Arc.

Two days later, the destroyer sighted survivors of the sinking of M.F Elliot and brought them aboard, running her tally up to 31 men rescued on that mission.

Following additional escort duty in the Caribbean and in the Gulf of Mexico, Tarbell began screening transatlantic convoys in mid-May 1943.

Tarbell returned to the United States at New York, underwent repairs, and conducted training before joining another Casablanca-bound convoy in August.

On 26 December, she departed Norfolk in company with Mission Bay and Destroyer Division 61 to cover convoy UGS-28 to North Africa, from there operating as a hunter/ killer group in the vicinity of the Azores.

After hunting submarines along the convoy routes, Tarbell's group reached Norfolk, on 7 February, and the destroyer set out for a 10-day availability at Boston.

Her name was struck from the Navy List on 13 August 1945, and she was sold for scrapping on 30 November 1945 to the Boston Metal Salvage Company, Baltimore, Maryland.