Abstract ABSTRACT: This paper traces advances in the art of governmental accounting in Massachusetts to approximately 1800. The material studied as a basis for the paper was drawn, for the most part, from original source documents in the Massachusetts Archives, supplemented by readings from Boston town records. The advances noted appear to follow an evolutionary process, culminating in a double-entry appropriation system in use in the colony in the years 1754-1775. Boston appears to have been using a double-entry system by the 1780s. The paper also makes note of a double-entry appropriation system for use by municipalities described in The Town Officer Freeman, 1791. The systems encountered appear to be in advance of systems used in Europe during this same period.
William C. Holmes (Mon,) studied this question.