BIO: Benjamin F. ETTER, Dauphin County, PA

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Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of Dauphin County, 
Containing Sketches of Representative Citizens, and Many of the 
Early Scotch-Irish and German Settlers.  Chambersburg, Pa.: 
J. M. Runk & Company, 1896, page 248.
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  ETTER, BENJAMIN F., lawyer of Harrisburg, and ex-deputy attorney 
general of Pennsylvania, was born at Middletown, Dauphin county, 
September 29, 1824.  He obtained his early education at the Middletown 
Academy.  At the age of twenty-two began reading law with James Fox, a 
lawyer of Harrisburg, and was admitted to practice on November 24, 
1851.  He opened a law office in Harrisburg the same year, and has been 
engaged in general practice in the civil courts of the county and State 
since, a period of thirty-one years.  Mr. Etter was appointed and 
served for six years as deputy attorney general under Attorney General 
William M. Meredith, and for a short time under Attorney General 
Benjamin H. Brewster.  His safe and judicious opinions as a counselor, 
his integrity and fidelity to his clients, and his uncompromising 
desire to defend the wrong and encourage the right have given him a 
high reputation in the profession.  He married, in 1857, Catherine A., 
daughter of Charles A. and Barbara A. (Keller) Snyder, of Lancaster, 
Pa.  Her father was a relative of Governor Snyder.  Their surviving 
children were Charles F., clerk in the First National Bank of 
Harrisburg; Nannie E., and George E. Etter.  His parents, George and 
Nancy (Shelly) Etter, died at Middletown, the former in 1850, aged 
sixty-seven; the latter in 1826, aged thirty.  His grandfather, Abraham 
Etter, settled in Dauphin county, from Lancaster, about 1800, where he 
died, and was of German origin.  His maternal grandfather was Abraham 
Shelly, of York county, Pa.