Daily AncestorBookkeeper
A bookkeeper recorded a business's daily money dealings, its sales, purchases, receipts and payments, in its account books.
The bookkeeper wrote each transaction into the daybooks and ledgers and brought the books to a trial balance, from which an accountant could prepare financial reports.
In 1900 enumerators were told to report a bookkeeper by that title and to state the kind of business, as bookkeeper, wholesale dry goods. From 1910 they were told plainly that a bookkeeper should be reported as such and not as a clerk.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1870 to 1940 census
Chas. Holt, 27, Bookkeeper, Bank
Sources
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Daily Ancestor. "Bookkeeper." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/bookkeeper. Last checked 2026-10-10.