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The Accounting Historians Journal Vol. 18, No. 2 December 1991
Jayne Fuglister CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY and Robert Bloom JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITY
ACCOUNTING RECORDS OF QUAKERS OF WEST FALMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS (1796-1860): AN ANALYSIS
Abstract: The village of West Falmouth, Massachusetts was settled in the 1660s by William Gifford and other Quakers who came there to avoid persecution. They lived relatively isolated from other settlers in the region. The accounting records of Prince Gifford, Jr. (1771-1853) and Prince Gifford Moore (1812-1885), descendants of William Gifford, are still in existence. This paper provides an analysis of these records, which reflect the simplicity, frugality, honesty, and equality of early West Falmouth Quakers. Littleton's antecedents of double-entry bookkeeping are applied to explain the use of the single-entry system of accounting by West Falmouth Quakers during the same period that Philadelphia Quakers were using the double-entry system.
This study examines accounting records of early American Quakers in West Falmouth, Massachusetts and analyzes the records within the context of the environmental conditions pre-vailing at the time the records were prepared. West Falmouth Quakers were semi-isolated compared to the Pennsylvania Quak-ers;1 and, accordingly, the records of the West Falmouth Quakers are considered likely to reflect the religious customs of Quakers in Colonial America. Additionally, West Falmouth Quaker account-
The authors are grateful for the assistance of Cecelia Lucinda Bowerman, and Harriet Quimby and Hannah Fitts of the Falmouth Historical Society for providing the records analyzed in this paper. Additionally, the authors thank two anonymous referees and Joe McKeon and Marilynn Collins for comments on this paper.
1Evidence that West Falmouth was settled mostly by Quakers, who were thus semi-isolated, is provided in Deyo [1890]:
"In 1678 lands were laid out at Oyster pond; also at Hog Island and great
Sipperwisset where the early settlers were William Gifford, Senior; Wil-
