Merger with Robert Douglas Company;

              Arthur W. Koelbel, partner-in-charge of H&S Boston Office (standing),
with (I. to r.) Norman E. Jones, Norman H. S. Vincent, and Edward S. Culver.
MERGER WITH
RORERT DOUGLAS & COMPANY
Our practice in Boston and surrounding
areas has been enhanced by merger, as
of May 31, 1964, with Robert Douglas
& Company. Welcomed to Haskins &
Sells are Norman H. S. Vincent, senior
partner of his firm, who has joined us
as a consultant, Norman E. Jones and
Edward S. Culver, who have become
H&S partners, and a professional and
office staff of seventeen men and women.
The history of Robert Douglas &
Company goes back more than fifty
years. Mr. Douglas, a Missourian, had
gone to Boston shortly after the turn of
the century as a systems specialist—a
good deal of his work in those years
was done for the shoemaking industry.
In 1911 he established an accounting
practice, having become one of the first
CPAs in Massachusetts, and in 1918 he
formed a partnership with Raymond D.
Willard. Mr. Douglas died in 1924, the
same year as Mr. Sells; Mr. Willard re­tired
in 1953 and died in 1959.
Since its founding, the firm has car­ried
on a general accounting practice.
In 1926 a sub-office was opened in
Lawrence, 25 miles north of Boston,
and today the practice there is man­aged
by Harold G. Bowen, who has
been appointed a principal in H&S.
Two of the partners have personal
ties with Canada. Mr. Vincent was born
in Quebec, and although his family
moved to the States while he was
young, he returned to join the Canadian
Expeditionary Forces to France during
the first world war. Mr. Culver, a native
of Ohio, served his accounting appren­ticeship
and became a chartered ac­countant
in Edmonton, Alberta, and
practiced in Grand Prairie, some 250
miles northwest of there, before return­ing
to the United States in 1936.
From the inception of the firm, all
partners and many of its staff have
made significant contributions to the
development of the accounting profes­sion,
and have participated actively in
their own communities. Mr. Douglas, a
pioneer in standard cost accounting,
was an organizer of the National Asso­ciation
of Accountants and first presi­dent
of the Boston chapter. Mr. Vin­cent,
who joined the firm in 1916 and
became a partner in 1922, has been a
national vice-president of NAA.
All of the partners have served the
Massachusetts Society of CPAs on com­mittees
and two, Mr. Vincent and Mr.
Jones, have been its president. At pres­ent,
Mr. Jones is chairman of the Com­mittee
on Ethics, and Mr. Vincent is
chairman of the Practice Review Com­mittee.
Mr. Vincent has served four
years on AICPA Council, and Mr. Jones
is a recently elected Council member.
In 1940, the firm was represented on
a committee of Massachusetts CPAs
which, at the request of Mayor Maurice
Tobin, studied and reported on the op­erations
of several departments of the
City of Boston.
A valued member of the Douglas
staff, Miss Mary Hall, was national
president of the 600-member American
Women's Society of Certified Public
Accountants in 1962-1963.
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