Mickley died on December 12, 1808, in Whitehall Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania.
Mickley was a Private in the Northampton County Militia in 1776 in Captain Benjamin Weiser’s Company. When the British invaded Philadelphia in 1777, the Executive Council made the decision to get all bells out of Philadelphia in order that they could not be melted to make ammunition for the British. The Liberty Bell was one of those bells. The cover story was that it was loaded into the wagons of the retreating Continental Army. Instead, it was loaded on the wagon of John Jacob Mickley, a member of the General Committee of Whitehall Township, and taken as far as Bethlehem where the wagon broke down on September 23, 1777. Mickley’s son, John Jacob, rode with his father on this journey. The Liberty Bell was then loaded onto the wagon of Frederik Leiser and continued to Allentown, arriving on September 24. It was placed beneath the floor of Zion’s Reformed Church.