The U.S. Army Finance Corps originated on 16 June 1775, when the Second Continental Congress appointed the first Paymaster General of the Army during the American Revolutionary War. Since then, finance personnel and units have been supporting the Army mission at home and around the world. In 1816, Congress established the Pay Department as a separate element of the War Department. Paymasters, usually with the rank of Major, had the principal duty of paying soldiers in the regiments. Each month paymasters computed payrolls, totaled the sum, and laden with a heavy box of gold, ventured into the field to pay the soldiers. Obviously, payday was not the last day of each month for everyone, but soldiers could expect to be paid on approximately the same day once a routine was established.
In 1912 the Pay Department was merged with the Quartermaster Corps. Because of the Quartermaster General's difficulty managing the disbursing and logistical missions simultaneously during World War 1, Congress reestablished a separate Finance Service in October 1918. In June 1920, Congress provided for the Finance Department and named Brigadier General Herbert M. Lord the first Army Chief of Finance. Under General Lord, the Finance Department's mission expanded to embrace all War Department financial actives. In addition to its traditional military pay and travel mission, the Finance Department became the centralized agent for Army disbursing, auditing, and budgeting. Lord also established the Finance School at Fort Washington, Maryland on 1 September 1920.
During World War 11, the Finance Department was subsumed under the Office of the Fiscal Director, Army Service Forces, taking on the added wartime mission of selling War Bonds and promoting National Service Life Insurance. After the war, the Office of the Fiscal Director was dissolved and the Finance Department was reestablished as a separate Army staff agency. Recognizing the highly technical and specialized nature of the finance mission, the Army Reorganization Act of 1950 redesignated the Finance Department as the Finance Corps, a basic branch of the Army. With the increasing post-war centralization of Army finance and accounting activities, Congress authorized the construction of the Army Finance Center at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana.
On 26 November 1990 the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) was established. As part of the consolidated operation, the DFAS Indianapolis Center builds sophisticated systems for the future while the U.S. Army Finance School trains military and civilian personnel to operate these systems and to carry on the finance mission performed first by Army paymasters during the Revolutionary War.