The Heeter family originated in Holland or Western Germany. The "Heeter Book" written by Ken Heeter and colleagues, whose official title is "Descendants of Sebastian Heeter 1760-1846 and his Two Wives Elizabeth Dilts and Elizabeth Rarick" explains everything for the last couple of centuries, but is rather large. And Sebastian Heeter was only one of several people with his name (which in the U.S. now appears as Hieter, Huter, Hueter, Heeter, Heater and probably others.) Virginia Deagan has a nice genealogy for her line, with some good information for many more Heeters.
How Many Heeters are there? Where I grew up (Minneapolis, MN), my family was the only one listed in the directory, and I never bumped into another Heeter until I got on the Internet. Actually there are quite a few of us, in the thousands, although not many compared to a lot of other family names. As of late 2001, Ancestry.com listed some 218 Heeters, primarily from the 1700s and 1800s in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Some appear to be duplicates. Very few living Heeters are listed there, so there must be many more of us than just those 218. :) The Social Security Death Index lists 10 "Robert Heeter"s alone. Yahoo.com's email listings in late 2001 had 74 Heeters, although some are duplicates; their database is well out of date though, since they have completely wrong information for my brother and I. It also uses only public addresses, and most email addresses aren't that public in these days of voluminous spam. Ken Heeter's book has 2685 Heeter entries in it, with some entries corresponding to ancestors but many corresponding to the current heads of living Heeter families - with the latest generation of children. And I've received email from a number of Heeters who don't connect up with the families in Ken's book, presumably from branches dating to before Sebastian Heeter's time (1760s), so there have to be around 10,000 (or more) of us!
Some Heeter information is given below, but due to time constraints here, I am not making any effort to compile more information or update it further.
For more detailed family tree information, I suggest emailing Ken Heeter, who should be accessible at this address: kjheeter (at) comcast (dot) net. (I've changed "@" to "(at)" and "." to "(dot)" to prevent spammers from automatically collecting his address from this page. You'll want to change them back.)
"Ohio Heeters":
Without boring you to death with a complete history, let me give you a brief run down. I was born in Ohio (Dayton) where there are many Heeter's (ie a dozen or so), there is a Heeter School and Heeter Road in Brookville OH as well as Heeter cemetery where one Sebastion Heeter has a large monument. Apparently Sebastion came from Philadelphia in late 1800's. Heeters came to Frederick Maryland in around 1740-1745 from Germany (George and Barbara Heeter) had 13 children, one of which was Sebastion (perhaps father or Grandfather of Ohio Sebastion) and moved to Phildelphia around 1800.
"Pennsylvania Heeters": (info from www.familyhistory.com message boards)
There are about 25 of us who live in Buffalo New York, My grandparents are part of the Pennsylvania Heeters, and still visit them yearly. They are all originally from Altoona PA. I would love to get more information from my grandfather and see how far back I can trace this thing.
"Missouri Heeters": "originally" from Monet, MO (info from www.familyhistory.com message boards)
Information compiled by Robert F. "Bob" Heeter, Livermore, California.