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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.
He saved his wages with the greatest care, and at the end of his first year in Boston had accumulated a modest little sum, which he meant should support him while he was learning his new trade. On the 15th of February, 1819, without the loss of a day, he began work with a piano-maker.
Through him I again had news of Karl Ritter, and was told that he was now at Naples, where he lived in the house of a piano-maker, whose children he had to teach in return for board and lodging. It seems that Winterberger, after running through everything, had on the strength of some of Liszt's introductions started off to seek his fortune in Hungary.
In this extremity the owner bethought him of Jonas Chickering, who had acquired an enviable reputation for skill in his trade, and it was thought that a good cabinet-maker ought of necessity to be a clever piano-maker.
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