Arter Family

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rter & erter

Deepest Root

Rege's Arter family lineage traces back to the German or Swiss-German surname of Oert(h)er. The most distant confirmed ancestor found is Johannes (possibly Johann Jacob) Oerther, a.k.a. John Arter and John Erder/Erter, who is first found in records from Longswamp Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania.

Johannes might have been the brother of Michael Oerther of Frederick County, Maryland. Michael married a Catherine Dill/Diehl and Johannes married Anna Maria Diehl. Their maiden names suggest that Catherine and Anna Maria might have been related. A book on the descendants of Michael, The Arters/Arthurs of Fountain Valley, hypothesizes that Michael was the son of a Wilhelm Oerther who immigrated around 1741, probably arriving in Philadelphia. Michael was married in January 1761 in St. Michael’s and Zion Church in Philadelphia and lived in Montgomery County for at least a short time before moving to Maryland. Both Michael and Johann Jacob had sons named William. (An earlier edition of The Arters/Arthurs of Fountain Valley hypothesized that Michael was the son of the Wilhelm Oerther who arrived September 16, 1751 in Philadelphia on the "Edinburg", but this theory has been abandoned. For one thing, Michael would have been 18 years old in 1751 and, therefore, should appear on the passenger lists.)

The Immigrant Ancestors

The immigrant ancestor(s) of the Arter/Oerter family are not known. We believe Johannes Oerter was born in America and probably in Pennsylvania, but he might have immigrated as a child.

Family History and Origins

We know that Johannes Oerter lived in Longswamp Township, Berks County. He baptized at least four children at Longswamp Reformed Church. There is a John Erder in the Longswamp Township tax records. His name appears in records with several spellings of the last name.

John Arter and his sons moved to Northumberland County before 1800. He appears as John Arthur in the 1790 census for Northumberland County, and as John Arter in 1800 along with his son Abraham. Rege's line remained in Pennsylvania, but several lines went west to Indiana and Illinois.

We have no deeper evidence concerning the origins of the John Arter/Johannes Oerter family other than its Germanic heritage. The Arters/Arthurs of Fountain Valley indicates that the Michael Arter/Oerther family was probably "originally Swiss Moravians who migrated to Alsace-Lorraine, probably after the Thirty Years' War." The book provides the following supporting arguments:

Several Protestant families were driven out of the Swiss town of Arth in 1655. This incident is very likely the origin of the surnames Orth and Oerther and their variants in several locales along the Rhine.
The book notes that "officials of the Moravian Church claim the name is Swiss".
"In 1982, Matthias Arter of Zurich visited Dick Arter and told some of the origins of the Arter family. He said the name is found only in the Zurich area of Switzerland and he has traced his own line back to the time the first Arter moved in from the farm area near Zurich in the 1400’s. He is endeavoring now to catalogue all Arter[s]. The Swiss kept genealogical records very early and Matthias said he found reference to those who went to Oberotterbach."
The inscriptions on the tombstones of Michael and his wife Catherine's are believed to have been written in an Alsatian dialect.

The Origin of the Name

The name Arter is an obvious "Americanization" of Oerter. Among the confirmed early written forms of the name in records are Erder and Oerther, and another possible spelling is Aerter. In German, particularly some dialects, the sounds of 't', 'th', and 'd' are very similar and these letters were frequently interchanged before spelling was standardized. The German vowel combination 'oe' is the same as the German umlauted o, or 'ö', which has no equivalent pronunciation in English, and German words with 'ö' have been transliterated different ways. We can easily expect to find any of the following spellings: Oe, O, E, A, or Ae. For these reasons, there is a variety of probable alternate spellings for this name.

The Arters/Arthurs of Fountain Valley relates that several Protestant families were driven out of the Swiss town of Arth in 1655. This incident is very likely the origin of the surnames Orth and Oerther and their variants in several locales along the Rhine.

The name "Orth" might be an earlier form of the Arter name. The September 30, 1858 edition of the German language newspaper published in Germantown, Pennsylvania by Christopher Sauer contained a request by a Michael Oerter from Ober Ottenbach in Gutenberger Amt for any information about a brother, George, who came to America seven years earlier. In the church records of the Reformed congregation of Ottenbach (FHL microfilm #1195770) the surname that appears most often is Orth. Unfortunately, the baptismal records for the Ottenbach Reformed Church generally identify only the child's father and sponsor(s). No evidence connecting the Ottenbach Orths/Orthers to the Michael Oerther family or Johann Jacob Oerter family could be found. In fact no Orth/Orther births were recorded for December 22, 1732, which is the birth date on Michael Oerther's tombstone. The names Michael and Georg fit well with with Michael Arter family information, but the 1751 immigration date implied by the newspaper article does not agree with the current theory on the arrive time of this Oerther/Arter family.

The most common forms of the name in early American records appear to be Arter, Erder, and Oerter.

As an additional note, The Arters/Arthurs of Fountain Valley mentions that the marriage record for Michael Arter and Catherine reads "Katarine Thiel and Michael Herter".

References

The Arters/Arthurs of Fountain Valley, 2nd Edition, compiled by M. Jane (Free) Fisher with Richard P. Arter (1989), entered on CD by Richard P. Arter in 2001

The Arter Story, by Blanche W. Arter (about 1961)

Genealogical Data Relating to the German Settlers of Pennsylvania and Adjacent Territory, Edwin W. Hocker, Baltimore Genealogical Publishing Company (1980)

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