Accounting procedures and techniques in the late eighteen hundreds

Upon browsing through a stack of books at a used book sale, I came upon the New Bryant & Stratton Counting-House Book-Keeping, copyright 1878. Out of curiosity, I purchased this book and placed it on my bookshelf for future reference. The textbook was written by Silas Packard for use in the curriculum of the chain of Bryant and Stratton Business Colleges. It was a revision of Bryant and Stratton\u27s Counting-House Book-Keeping, first published in 1863. The curriculum of the college was designed to educate students in the field of Office Practices. Science of Accounts was the title of the core program, which included the following courses: bookkeeping, business law, commercial arithmetic, practical penmanship, and business correspondence (Quinney). I would like to share my findings on the accounting procedures and techniques used to instruct students of that period. In so doing, I will present a problem illustrating the accounting methods utilized at that time. It will be shown that certain procedures then in use differ substantially from those required by current Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)