Go to The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales for a free online "unique database providing a who was who in accountancy for 1874-1965 indexing over 5000 published obituaries/biographical profiles and 2000 photographs of accountants"
Last updated in August the database also provides tools to help researchers who are trying to trace the history of accountancy firms.
"Users can browse the obituaries index by the name of the accountant or by the name of the accountancy firm. Each entry lists the accountant's full name, their qualifications and full details of the issue the obituary was published in. The name of the accountancy firm is included in the database to enable researchers to trace the history of firms through their staff and partners. A separate index is provided to photographs.
A selection of the life stories waiting to be uncovered can be found in the short article Achievements, tragedies and disasters.
"Start your search for your accountant ancestor at http://goo.gl/QLgEQ
I did not expect to find family trees in an article about accountants, so this one deserves not only a look, but a follow up reading.
ReplyDeleteMy memory of history is that after the dark ages, someone figured out that accountants were kings' most important support staff, and that education was crucial to creating clerks. Now we have computers.
A fascinating but limited resource. Most of the indexes will not open in Firefox - it doesn't like the ashx extension, but will in Safari. I was surprised at how slow it was and also how limited in the names included. One of my relatives was a prominent accountant and founded a firm the name of which existed until the 1950s. He was also an MP. Nada. The only person of the right surname listed for his company - which had several family members as partners - was one I'd never heard of.
ReplyDelete