Chickering mortgaged the factory and bought out John and William H. John Mackay was lost at sea in February 1841. Mackay, joined the firm, the enterprise was known as Chickering & Mackay from 1839 until the death of the elder Mackay in 1841. The firm became known as Jonas Chickering & Co. By 1840 the firm was the leading American manufacturer of grand pianos. Mackay, built a new five story factory with warerooms and a small concert hall at 334 Washington Street and a warehouse at Franklin Square. In 1837 Chickering and Mackay, along with Mackay's son William H. In 1830 Chickering became associated with John Mackay, a merchant, as well as organ and piano maker who had worked with Alpheus Babcock, doing business as Chickering & Co. The firm was organized as Stewart & Chickering, and continued until Stewart returned to England in 1826. They produced 15 pianos the first year at workshops at 20 Common Street and sold their first piano on Jfor $275. In 1819 he was apprenticed to the piano maker John Osborne, with whom he worked until 1823 when he founded a partnership with the English piano maker James Stewart who had been active with Osborne. In 1823, Chickering formed a partnership with piano maker James Stewart. One year later he began working for piano maker John Osborn at 12 Orange Street. In 1818, with Gould's permission, Chickering moved to Boston and apprenticed with cabinetmaker James Baker. He worked as an apprentice to John Gould in New Ipswich, NH, as a cabinetmaker. It is guessed that this was done in order to get the string coil closer to the pinblock and so to have more of the tuning pin actually in the pinblock.American piano manufacturer, Jonas Chickering, was born in Mason, New Hampshire on Apand died in Boston, Massachusetts on Dec. A Decker Brothers piano has been more recently described as having 'the most unusual design in the bass.' This is because the strings go under the plate at the tuning pin end with the tuning pin sticking up through a hole. The Decker Brothers piano had typical late square action and dampers, but very good scaling ahead of its day. The company ended its operations at the death of one of the brothers around the turn of the 20th century. Today the Decker Brothers pianos do not sell for as much as their more famous counterparts, yet they still command more than double the price of an average piano manufacturer of that era. However, they did not achieve the notability of some of their counterparts, specifically Steinway & Sons and Chickering and Sons, even though widely acknowledged as being equivalent in quality to the Steinway and Chickering pianos of the era. The Decker Brothers pianos are known for their exceptional quality in knowledgeable piano circles, and The New York Times wrote that they had 'a wide spread and enviable reputation for their superior quality'.

Chickering piano quality