News Release

Faculty member solves Benjamin Franklin mystery

October 10, 2007

Benjamin Franklin scholars, including Penn State Harrisburg Associate Professor of Humanities and History George Boudreau, have long considered the Junto as one of the shaping influences in the life of the Founding Father.

The Junto (Latin for meeting) was a club established by Franklin in 1727 for mutual improvement in Philadelphia. Also known as the Leather Apron Club, its purpose was to debate questions of morals, politics, and natural philosophy, and to exchange knowledge of business affairs. Although most of the members were older than Franklin, he was clearly their leader.

Enumerating the club’s influence on Franklin’s ideas and career, scholars have noted that the Junto was the first of many civic organizations founded by Franklin and was his first organized outlet for forays into natural philosophy and community planning.

The Junto was the locus from which Franklin and his fellows created America’s first public library, the American Philosophical Society, and a host of other accomplishments.

Ironically, one of the remaining mysteries of the club’s story has been a question of numbers. How many men were the first members of the Junto? Through tedious research, Dr. Boudreau has solved the mystery and identified a member not listed before.

“Writing in 1771, Franklin noted the names of ten of his fellows who joined him to form the Junto in 1727. Yet when Franklin resumed his autobiographical account in 1788, he was careful to state that the original Junto had twelve members and that he pushed his fellow members to keep their club at that number,” Dr. Boudreau writes in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, published by The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Boudreau questioned whether this was a mathematical error or if a twelfth man joined the artisans and shopkeepers who gathered each Friday night to discuss local events and personal careers in early eighteenth-century Philadelphia. “If so,” Dr. Boudreau writes, “who was the Junto’s mystery member?”

He found the answer to the mystery in the archives of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania in the form of small notebooks kept by Nicholas Scull, a surveyor – and more importantly a tavern keeper. “Scull’s commonplace notebooks, which he and members of his family used over a period of years, held a remarkable find for Franklin scholars,” Dr. Boudreau stresses. “It was in his Indian Head Tavern where the Junto first met until the group relocated to Scull’s Bear Tavern in 1728. In January 1728, Scull began recording the Junto members’ accounts (tabs) into his book. All the names associated with the Junto were familiar, except one – John Jones, shoemaker.”

But who was John Jones? “He was a Junto member hidden in plain sight. The twelfth member,” Dr. Boudreau relates. Aided by the “shoemaker” label in Scull’s accounts, further research traces Jones to Franklin’s circle in a variety of ways in addition to the Junto.

“He patronized Franklin’s shop, purchasing advertisements and ink in July 1730 and paper that December. In addition to the Junto, Jones followed Franklin into membership in the St. John’s Lodge of the Freemasons, the Philadelphia Contributionship (fire insurance company), and in 1731, he was a founding member of the Library Company of Philadelphia, where he signed his name surrounded by fellow Junto members that November,” Dr. Boudreau adds.

A devout Quaker, Jones’ will also provides a unique glimpse into the Junto’s beliefs about human freedom and slavery. “Jones owned four slaves at the time of his death,” Dr. Boudreau writes. “His will frees them ‘from their bondage or slavery’ and provides an annuity for each for the remainder of their lives,” he adds.