View Message

1. English (West Midlands): habitational name from any of the places called Harthill, named with Old English heorot ‘hart’ + hyll ‘hill’. There are several places of this name, for example in Cheshire, Derbyshire, and South Yorkshire, but apparently none in the West Midlands. It is also possible that the surname represents a truncated derivative of Hartlebury in Worcestershire. This place name derives from the Old English personal name Heortla + Old English burh ‘fort’.
2. German: Americanized spelling of Hartel or Härtel.
(Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press)
www.ancestry.com