Jared Maurice Arter

Who was Jared Maurice Arter?

Jared Maurice Arter was born into slavery on January 27, 1850 in Jefferson County, West Virginia. His father was Jeremiah Arter, who was not very present in Jared’s life because of his slave status and his work in the mills in Jefferson County. When Jared was about seven, his father died after falling down some stairs and being paralyzed at a mill. Jared’s mother’s name was Hannah Frances Stephenson Arter. She was a slave who was thirty-eight years younger than Jared’s father.

Arter lived near Harpers Ferry during the early part of his life, and when he was nine, he witnessed the hanging of four of the abolitionist John Brown's men: Cook, Coppie, Green, and Stephens. A couple years after this, in the midst of the Civil War, Arter saw both Union and Confederate troops march past where he lived.

Under the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Arter’s family was freed from slavery. Shortly after being freed, Arter’s mother took most of the family, including Arter, to Washington, D.C. There a family was found for Arter by the name of Wealch where he stayed for short while.

In 1865, Arter’s mother got a proposition from a businessman from New York to educate her two older boys, on the condition that they would be bound to him until they were twenty-one. Arter jumped at the opportunity to get a good education, and spent the next several years working for the Ayer family and beginning his education.