Nineteenth century public accounting in Boston

              The Accounting Historians
Vol. 23, No. 1 ©Academy of Accounting Historians April, 2000
NINETEENTH CENTURY PUBLIC
ACCOUNTING IN BOSTON
by
Richard Vangermeersch, University of Rhode Island
A panel discussion on "The Past,
Current, and Future of the Massachusetts
Society of CPAs" will be presented at the
Northeast Regional American Accounting
Association Meeting of April 20-22, 2000.
In preparation and in addition to my work
on Harvey S. Chase, an early founder of the
Massachusetts Society, I have reviewed the
nineteenth century Boston City Directories
at the Boston Public Library. The intent of
this review was to include Boston into a
work done by A. C. Littleton in 1942 on
New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia
accountants. Professor A. C. Littleton of the
University of Illinois is, perhaps, the most
recognized writer of the accounting history
in the United States. Littleton wrote
Directory of Early American Public Accountants
as Bulletin No. 62 of the University of
Illinois' Bureau of Economic and Business
Research. The article was reprinted in 1988
in Stephen A. Zeff's The U.S. Accounting
Profession in the 1890s and Early 1900s.
Boston city directories were pub­lished
on a sporadic basis and held in
microfilm form in the Boston Public
Library from 1789. A business listing sec­tion
was included in 1846. In 1849 the
first listing for public accountants
occurred. Table 1 shows the 13 different
categories for the 50 years from 1849
through 1899.
Table 1
Classification of Public Accountants in
the Boston City Directories 1849-1899
(a) Accountants and Copyists, 1849-1864
(b) Account Adjuster, 1854
(c) Account & Book Adjuster, 1855-1880
(d) Accountants, 1865, 1866
(e) Auditor of Accounts, 1868-1899
(f) Adjuster of Complicated Accounts,
1869-1872
(g) Account Auditors and Adjusters of
Complicated Accounts and Books,
1873, 1876, 1880, 1881
(h) Account Auditors and Adjusters of
Complicated Accounts, 1874-1876
(i) Account Adjuster and Auditor
of Complicated Accounts and
Estates, 1877
(j) Account Auditor, 1877-1880
(k) Accountants and Auditors, 1881-1899
(1) Account Adjuster, Auditor, and
Examiner of Complicated Accounts
and Books, 1882, 1883
(m) Public Accountants
ACCOUNTING...continued on page 28
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