The young singer does not seem to have filled the place beyond the prescribed time. By a decree of Elector Clemens August, dated March, 1733 (the month of Joseph Haydn’s birth), he became Court Musician in Bonn with a salary of 400 florins, a large one for those days, particularly in the case of a young man who only three months before had completed his 20th year. Allowing the usual year of probation to which candidates for the court chapel were subjected, Beethoven must have come to Bonn in 1732. This corresponds to the time spent at Louvain as well as to a petition of 1774, to be given hereafter, in which Johann speaks of his father’s “42 years of service.” There is another paper of date 1784 which makes the elder Beethoven to have served about 46 years, but this is from another hand and of less authority than that written by the son. OTHER BEETHOVEN FAMILIES IN BONN What it was that persuaded Ludwig van Beethoven to go to Bonn is unknown. Gottfried Fischer, who owned the house in the Rheingasse in which two generations of Beethovens lived, professed to know that Elector Clemens August learned to know him as a good singer at Liège and for that reason called him to Bonn. That is not impossible, whether the Elector went to Louvain or Ludwig introduced himself to him at Liège. But it is significant that another branch of the Beethoven family was already represented at Bonn. Michael van Beethoven was born in Malines in February, 1684. He was a son of Cornelius van Beethoven and Catherine Leempoel, and beyond doubt, as the later associations in Bonn prove, closely related to the Antwerp branch of the family. Michael van Beethoven married Maria Ludovica Stuykers (or Stuykens) on October 8, 1707. His eldest son also bore the name of Cornelius (born in September, 1708, in Malines) and there were four other sons born to him during his stay in Malines, among them two who were named Louis, up to 1715. At a date which is uncertain, this family removed to Bonn. There Cornelius, on February 20, 1734, married a widow named Helena de la Porte (née Calem), in the church of St. Gangolph, Ludwig van Beethoven, the young court singer, being one of the witnesses. In August of the same year Cornelius was proxy for his father (who, evidently, had not yet come to Bonn), as godfather for Ludwig’s first child. Later, after his son had established a household, he removed to Bonn, for Michael van Beethoven died in June, 1749, in Bonn, and in December of the same year Maria Ludovica Stuykens (_sic_), “the Widow van Beethoven.” Cornelius became a citizen of Bonn on January 17, 1736, on the ground that he had married the widow of a citizen, and in 1738 he stands alone as representative of the name in the list of Bonn’s citizens. He seems to have been a merchant, and is probably the man who figures in the annual accounts of Clemens August as purveyor of candles. He lost his wife, and for a second married Anna Barbara Marx,