The Junteau is a clubhouse-in-waiting. On simple account of the lack of a physical space, this Substack will have to do for now. A “virtual clubhouse” — a place of discussion, reflection, inspiration, and a celebration of the good life and what it takes to get there. In spirit, it belongs to a tradition that stretches back centuries or more, which is human beings carving out private or semi-private spaces for themselves and others.
We’re all just kids, grown up a little. Boys build blanket forts and tree houses. Girls host tea parties or invent their own private worlds. From our earliest beginnings, we seek out or build these quiet places of solace, reflection, and exclusivity. They’re a refuge from the noise and chaos of broader society, or a space reserved for those of like mind and interest. As we get older, these impulses simply mature rather than disappear. Our forts become social clubs. The tea parties become societies. What begins as play evolves into a lifelong oscillation between our energetic integration with modern day-to-day life and our equally strong desire for silence, private conversation, reflection, philosophizing, or simply blissful epicurean enjoyment.
America’s first social club of its kind
The name “Junteau” is an homage to The Junto — one of, if not the first, social clubs in America. Also known as the Leather Apron Club, it was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1727 in Philadelphia as a “club for mutual improvement.” 21 years old and just back from his first London apprenticeship, Franklin gathered a circle of artisans, tradesmen, gentlemen, and scholars to meet every Friday evening at a local tavern to discuss business, philosophy, morals, science, civic affairs, and the general goings-on in the world — and, occasionally, long group walks or exercise sessions. The mix was deliberately diverse. It had a scrivener-poet, a glazier-mathematician, a shoemaker-turned-surveyor, a bartender, a cabinetmaker, a merchant’s clerk, and Franklin himself, a printer.
Spawned early American institutions
What happened during those Friday night gatherings reverberated across the city and eventually the early nation at large. Out of the Junto came the Library Company of Philadelphia (the first subscription library in America), the Union Fire Company (one of the first volunteer fire brigades), proposals that shaped street lighting, law reform, and neighborhood watch patrols, and later the American Philosophical Society and even Franklin’s educational plans that grew into the University of Pennsylvania. It’s even said to have spawned the concept of “craft cocktails.”
When demand for membership exceeded its 12-person cap, Franklin helped spawn “subordinate clubs” that mimicked the same format and fed insights back to the original group. The Junto, in effect, became a civic multiplier in a primordial America. These spinoffs included groups such as The Vine, The Union, and others that extended its reach across Philadelphia and beyond.
An amalgam of intellectual, epicurean, and athletic interest
So, The Junto was something of a hybrid — part debate society, part business association, part philosophy circle, part literary workshop, part drinking club, part athletic club. It was something totally new, a structured forum for truth-seeking, mutual aid, civic invention, and a bit of an outlet for mental and physical health. It was a place where seriousness and sociability were deliberately and effectively blended, often under the roof of a tavern but later in private houses.
Franklin didn’t invent the underlying concept, but he enhanced and Americanized it. He was building on two main strands of inspiration:
From England, he borrowed the spirit of the coffeehouse clubs and philosophical societies he had seen during his London apprenticeship years, a defining feature of 17th and early 18th-century English intellectual life. There was the Royal Society (1660), England’s great scientific fellowship whose ranks included John Locke and later Isaac Newton. The Kit-Cat Club (1690s–1720s) was a Whig political and literary circle that brought together writers like Addison and Steele with statesmen such as the Duke of Marlborough. The Rota Club (1659) was a republican debate society organized around set questions — a clear inspiration of The Junto’s own “standing queries” which we’ll talk about in a minute. And the so-called Dry Club, a more obscure society associated with Locke, which pledged its members to pursue truth without the “heat” of argument. And this was precisely the spirit Franklin later encoded in the Junto’s four qualifications for membership.
From New England, he drew on Cotton Mather’s Essays to Do Good — a Puritan call to form small voluntary societies devoted to moral improvement and public service. But Franklin secularized Mather’s ideas by stripping away their religious framing and retooled them for artisans and tradesmen in the more commercially-focused Mid-Atlantic colonial city.
Marrying Old World enlightenment with New World frontierism
Franklin’s genius was to merge all of these traditions — the earnest, improvement-minded spirit of Mather with the convivial, truth-seeking culture of English clubs — and transplant them into the soil of Philadelphia and early America, a society fundamentally yeoman, anti-aristocratic, self-made, and frontier-coded in nature. In other words, devoid of Old World deference to landed aristocracy and elitist caste thinking. The result was something with a distinctly American flavor. That is, less feudal, less status-driven, and more practical, local, and profoundly generative of new ideas that would go on to help define America.
Every week, the Junto’s members sat down to a ritual. The club secretary read aloud a list of 24 standing questions, pausing between each long enough “to fill and drink a glass of wine.” These questions covered everything from recent books and experiments, to local business failures, to defects in the laws, to how they might encourage a “young beginner” in town. Members wrote essays every quarter, read them aloud, and debated ideas. That said, the rules banned dogmatism and direct contradiction. To “positively” assert an opinion or argue purely “to win” was a finable offense. The Junto wasn’t about scoring political points, but about exploring ideas together in pursuit of truth.
The 24 Junto Questions
(Members were expected to review these before meetings so they could contribute usefully)
Have you met with anything in the author you last read, remarkable, or suitable to be communicated to the Junto; particularly in history, morality, poetry, physic, travels, mechanic arts, or other parts of knowledge?
What new story have you lately heard agreeable for telling in conversation?
Hath any citizen in your knowledge failed in his business lately, and what have you heard of the cause?
Have you lately heard of any citizen’s thriving well, and by what means?
Have you lately heard how any present rich man, here or elsewhere, got his estate?
Do you know of any fellow citizen, who has lately done a worthy action, deserving praise and imitation? Or who has committed an error, proper for us to be warned against and avoid?
What unhappy effects of intemperance have you lately observed or heard? Of imprudence? Of passion? Or of any other vice or folly?
What happy effects of temperance? Of prudence? Of moderation? Or of any other virtue?
Have you or any of your acquaintance been lately sick or wounded? If so, what remedies were used, and what were their effects?
Who do you know that are shortly going voyages or journeys, if one should have occasion to send by them?
Do you think of anything at present, in which the Junto may be serviceable to mankind? To their country, to their friends, or to themselves?
Hath any deserving stranger arrived in town since last meeting, that you heard of? And what have you heard or observed of his character or merits? And whether think you, it lies in the power of the Junto to oblige him, or encourage him as he deserves?
Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up, whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage?
Have you lately observed any defect in the laws of your country, of which it would be proper to move the legislature for an amendment? Or do you know of any beneficial law that is wanting?
Have you lately observed any encroachment on the just liberties of the people?
Hath anybody attacked your reputation lately? And what can the Junto do towards securing it?
Is there any man whose friendship you want, and which the Junto, or any of them, can procure for you?
Have you lately heard any member’s character attacked? And how have you defended it?
Hath any man injured you, from whom it is in the power of the Junto to procure redress?
In what manner can the Junto, or any of them, assist you in any of your honourable designs?
Have you any weighty affair in hand, in which you think the advice of the Junto may be of service?
What benefits have you lately received from any man not present?
Is there any difficulty in matters of opinion, of justice and injustice, which you would gladly have discussed at this time?
Do you see anything amiss in the present customs or proceedings of the Junto, which might be amended?
The 4 Qualifications for Membership
(New members, standing with hand on breast, had to answer these four questions)
Have you any particular disrespect to any present members?
Answer: I have not.Do you sincerely declare that you love mankind in general, of what profession or religion soever?
Answer: I do.Do you think any person ought to be harmed in his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions, or his external way of worship?
Answer: No.Do you love truth for truth’s sake, and will you endeavour impartially to find and receive it yourself and communicate it to others?
Answer: Yes.
Good fun
The Junto wasn’t always solemn and serious. Once a month the members would “hum” a humorous poem written about themselves. And of course there was the physical exercise component, meeting up to exercise “across the river” in the warmer months or to take long walks “out of town.” They enjoyed their wine pauses, each other’s company, and the easy conviviality of men who worked with their hands and minds alike. It was an early mashing of the eventual “white collar” and “blue collar” worlds. So it was a club, but also a sort of workshop… one part philosophy seminar, one part neighborhood council, one part start-up incubator.
Poetic etymology
The word Junto was Franklin’s derivation from the Spanish junta, meaning “assembly” (not the coup d’état version, but the gathering). Over time, the word would come to connote conspiracy or intrigue, but in Franklin’s hands it meant collaboration, action, and community involvement.
Junteau is simply our derivation. You won’t find this arrangement of letters associated with any other business, publication, or venture as far as I can tell. So, it’s ours. More importantly, it combines the humble feeling of a local shopkeeper or small business owner with a global, multi-cultural connotation, which Franklin later became perhaps most known for. In that spirit, our “Junteau” carries a double meaning. “Junt” is Scottish for “a large chunk and “eau” is French for “water.” So… a big “chunk of water” — or ice depending on your climactic period of choice — so the world itself. The world in its largest, densest, most fluid sense.
I thought it was a poetic choice since Franklin himself knew this national-etymological blend well. When he was traveling through Scotland, he experienced what he would later call his “densest happiness.” And during his time in France, he engineered the most consequential alliance in modern history — helping to secure American independence while living as both diplomat and bon vivant. Franklin was flawed, yes, just like all of us. But he was the consummate global executive and epicurean in pursuit of constant self-improvement, not just for himself but his early community and nascent state. Franklin mastered the art of being local and global at once.
That is the spirit we honor now. Like Franklin’s Junto, Junteau seeks to assemble a circle of curious, restless minds to exchange ideas, test arguments, and turn thought into action. To read, to write, to share, to debate, to laugh, to drink, to be merry, and maybe someday conceive new ideas or institutions that might outlast us.
Junteau means the world, both literally and figuratively. Let’s enjoy it.