While many recent accounting histories focus on large companies or institutions and
describe the origins, antecedents, or developments of modern practice, few explore
the working world of the common man and the activities needed to survive on farms
and in rural areas. This paper describes the life of a nondescript early nineteenth
century working man primarily through his personal account book. Joseph E. Bell
lived in Lincolnton, North Carolina from 1820-1827 and was at various times a
minister, a teacher, a seller of books, a renter, a hauler of cotton, a farmer, an
extractor of teeth and perhaps a merchant as well. Bell's account book illuminates a
life rarely examined by today's accounting historians. It reveals the range of
skills and flexibility that were needed to survive in an era preceding the advent of
the modern job or career. The account book clearly shows the nature of accounting in
a rural economy that had relatively little hard currency and relied on multiparty
barter transactions.
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