Jared Maurice Arter

[1] 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 American Civil War, Arter saw both Union and Confederate troops march past where he lived.

[2] 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.

He attended Newfield and Ithaca, a private school in New York, Washington, D.C., Storer College, Harper's Ferry.

After being questioned on his views of human progress, he said: "Urge above all things else regenerated lives and loyalty to God, patriotism, true home building, economy, education, race consciousness and unceasing efforts to deserve and to secure all rights.