The oldest of Shinah Solomon Etting and Elijah Etting’s children, Reuben was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1762. In 1778 his father died, and two years later his mother, no longer finding the frontier town of York a hospitable environment to raise her family, moved down to Baltimore with her five youngest.

Reuben would eventually follow his family to Maryland, although he never completely settled in the city. While he spent considerable time with his mother and sister Sally in Baltimore, Etting moved back and forth between that city and Philadelphia, pursuing business prospects in both. He traded in dry goods, ran a millinery shop, and worked as an auctioneer. Financial success, however, never smiled on him as it did his brother Solomon.

In 1794, two years after Solomon had married Rachel Gratz, Reuben married her first cousin Frances, the daughter of Philadelphia’s Michael Gratz. They had eight children, including Benjamin.

When the United States seemed to be on the verge of war with France in 1798, Etting served as captain of a militia called the Independent Blues. Despite his desire for civic involvement, public service and prestige, Jews were forbidden from holding public office in Maryland. So, it marked a milestone in the Jewish struggle for rights when in 1801 Thomas Jefferson appointed Etting a federal marshal for Maryland. However it would take another twenty-four years for Jews to win full equality in Maryland, a fight that would consume the Etting brothers and their associate Jacob I Cohen.