Solomon Etting was the second son born to Indian trader Elijah and Shinah Solomon Etting in York, Pennsylvania. Young Solomon was just 14 when his father died suddenly in 1778, leaving his widowed mother with seven children to supportand an eighth child on the way. Two years later, his mother and sisters moved to Baltimore, leaving 16-year-old Solomon and his eighteen-year-old brother Reuben in York to pursue their prospects. Twelve years later, Solomon would join the rest of the family in Baltimore, the city that soon became the arena for his varied and assiduous efforts in politics and business.

As a young man, Solomon accrued a distinct benefit from ties his father had cultivated with Jewish merchants at Lancaster.

At eighteen, Etting became the first American-born shohet, trained to this role by Barnard Gratz, an old friend of his father. A year later, he married 19-year-old Reyna (also called Rachel) Simon, one of the younger daughters of Joseph Simon, another associate of his father’s. This marriage linked Etting and Simon as kin; together they ran a general store that served Lancaster and outfitted westward-bound pack trains headed for the Ohio Valley. During the years in Lancaster, Etting rose through the ranks of the Masonic lodge, and Reyna gave birth to their four children. Their domestic happiness was destroyed in 1790, however, when Reyna died at age 26. Etting moved his small family to Philadelphia shortly thereafter.

Etting remarried in 1791, this time to Rachel Gratz, the only daughter of Barnard Gratz. Ties between the two families would be further strengthened two years later when his brother Reuben would marry Solomon’s new wife’s first cousin, Frances, the daughter of Michael Gratz. Both couples would soon settle in Baltimore.

In Baltimore, Solomon Etting achieved remarkable success by rotating his involvement through a string of ventures. His first business in the city was a hardware store on Calvert Street. This was followed by growing ventures in shipping and commerce. In 1796, he became a director of the Union Bank and encouraged his family to purchase stock in the enterprise. In 1797, he joined in founding the city’s water company. Ten years later, in 1807, he helped found the Baltimore East India Company with a sizeable investment. He would eventually serve as a director of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first company of its kind in the United States.

Etting was equally active in the civic realm. After only two years in the city, he was elected to a committee of citizens to present Baltimore’s resolution disapproving the Jay Treaty to President Washington. He soon joined a local club of Jeffersonian Republicans, and later helped to incorporate the German Society of Maryland, of which he was vice president for two decades. During the War of 1812, when Baltimore was under attack by British forces, Etting represented his ward on the Committee of Vigilance and Safety, playing a significant role in the defense of the city by finding accommodations for soldiers and establishing a hospital for the sick and wounded. Etting also joined the Maryland State Colonization Society, an organization concerned with a largely futile effort to encourage resettlement of manumitted slaves in Africa.

Etting’s most significant political role, however, was as a proponent of equal rights for Jews in the United States. He publicly challenged American politicians like Henry Clay when they used the word “Jew” in a derogatory fashion. In 1797, he engineered the introduction of a bill to the Maryland legislature to remove the requirement that one had to profess Christianity in order to vote or hold public office—a stricture which effectively prevented Jews from participating in Maryland politics. Though this bill soon failed, he made certain that it was re-introduced in each legislative session until it finally passed in 1826. A few months later, Solomon and Jacob I. Cohen became the first Jews elected to the Baltimore City Council, a body of which Etting would later become president.