AMERICA'S EARLIEST RECORDED TEXT IN ACCOUNTING; SARJEANT'S 1789 BOOK

In 1789, seven years before the text developed by “pioneer American [accounting] author” William Mitchell appeared, Thomas Sarjeant of Philadelphia published An Introduction to the Counting House. It was a concise and able expression of a long mercantile bookkeeping tradition destined to result in later American texts. A mathematics teacher in England and a Philadelphia “academy,” Sarjeant also contributed works on commercial arithmetic.

There is significant bibliographical evidence that An Introduction to the Counting House, which is readily available within a remarkable historical microform series, was the first text on accounting to be produced by an American writer.