ABSTRACT
Eric Mackay Noble was twenty-eight years old when, in 1875, he journeyed from Edinburgh to board ship at the port of Greenock near Glasgow and sail to New York. Little is known about Noble and there does not appear to be a physical description of him in the public record. On arrival at the Manhattan Island reception point, he appears to have proceeded immediately from New York to Washington in the District of Columbia and practised there as a public accountant until his death in 1892 at the age of forty-five. He was unmarried and the first of the Scots accounting immigrants in this book to die in the US. In Washington, Noble’s professional services included the duties of a commissioner in the Court of Claims.1 This meant that he was approved to present property claims of clients to the Court and therefore continued the court-related practise he probably experienced in Scotland. Noble’s place in accounting history, however, is as the first CA to emigrate from the UK to the US and develop a career there as a resident rather than as a public accountant visiting that country for purposes of providing an audit or investigatory service for a UK-based client.
