A single instance will serve to show the minuteness and persistence of his investigations. In one of the public libraries of Stockholm Mickley discovered an ancient Dutch manuscript signed by Peter Minuit. No scholar within reach could master its contents. The private secretary of the ambassador from Holland, who was appealed to, asserted beforehand that he "could read anything that ever was written in Dutch." Yet, after a long inspection, he frankly owned his inability to decipher a single word of it. Mr. Mickley was determined to ascertain the contents. As the document could not be bought at any price, and could not even be removed over-night from its place of keeping, he caused photographs to be taken of it. One such copy was sent to a very learned acquaintance in Amsterdam, and another to a noted scholar at Leipsic. In the course of subsequent travels he found accurate translations awaiting him from both sources. The importance of the manuscript in this connection will be the more appreciated when it is remembered that Peter Minuit commanded the first expedition ever sent to the shores of the Delaware River. Being thus by nature an historian, it is but natural that Mr. Mickley should have left behind him ample materials for telling the story of his own life. From these we learn that the family name was originally Michelet. It dates back to the French Huguenots who, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, settled in Zweibrcken, a Grerman province. The first foothold of the family in this country was established in that portion of Pennsylvania which has for more than a century been thickly peopled by that enlightened and art-fostering sect, the Moravians. It was from the Moravian influence that Joseph J. Mickley first experienced a fondness for music and its appropriate artistic surroundings. He was born March 24, 1799, at South Whitehall, a township then in Lehigh County, but originally comprised in Northampton. At the age of seventeen he went to Philadelphia as apprentice to a piano-maker. At that time the method of building a piano-forte was as different from the advanced art of these days as was the instrument itself. The piano-maker had then to work from the legs upward. His necessary duties demanded knowledge which is now distributed among several entirely distinct sets of artificers. That young Mickley satisfactorily completed his apprenticeship may be inferred from two facts: he started in business for himself in August, 1822, and in October, 1831, the Franklin Institute awarded him a prize for skill in the manufacture of pianos.