With the establishment of the first English colonies in America, accounting or bookkeeping, as the discipline was referred to then, quickly assumed an important role in the development of American commerce. Two hundred years, however, would pass before accounting would separate from bookkeeping, and nearly three hundred years would pass before the profession of accounting, as it is now practiced, would emerge.

For individuals and businesses, accounting records in Colonial America often were very elementary. Most records of this period relied on the single-entry method or were simply narrative accounts of transactions. As rudimentary as they were, these records were important because the colonial economy was largely a barter and credit system with substantial time passing before payments were made. Accounting records were often the only reliable records of such historical transactions.

The Emergence of Accounting

Prior to the late 1800s, the terms bookkeeping...