<p>Just out of curiosity, does the term "Quaker" have anything to do with oatmeal ? For some reason I think it does. When I hear the word Quaker i instantaneously think about oatmeal. I think the most famous oatmeal brand is called Quaker oats or something like that if I am not mistaken. What in the world would Quakers have to do with oatmeal anyways ? Seems like a weird name for a company. </p>
<p>I know that the term probably has more to do with the progressive Quaker religious movement more than anything else, since (I believe) Philly had strong Quaker roots back in the day.</p>
<p>Ben Franklin was a big fan of granola bars. Cinammon was his favorite. When he started the school, he insisted that every student eat a granola bar each day. The students agreed as long as the granola was made by Quaker Oats. The rest is history.</p>
<p>Relax Euroazn, this was meant to be a joke just for comedic relief and to relive the tension. </p>
<p>Ha, that’s a good one Old College Try, but I herd differently. Back in the day, when the majority of Penn’s students were Quakers, gruel was a mandatory part of every Quaker’s diet - mostly for religious reasons. The students hated it but were forced to make due with what they had. Then, during the Spring fling of 1900, a group of Penn Students played a prank on the school by sneaking into the kitchen and replacing the gruel with oats they had collected from surrounding farms,they assumed the students would hate the meal. Instead, the students loved it and dubbed the meal “Quaker Oats.” A group of enterprising freshmen realized the commercial potential of the meal and incorporated the company before setting out on an wild expansion spree and so the company “Quaker Oats” was born. The rest as they say is history.</p>
<p>“Quaker Oats” was the first trademark ever to be registered for a breakfast cereal. I don’t think the owners were Quakers themselves, but the part of Ohio where they lived in fact had a significant Quaker population, who apparently had an image of simplicity, honesty, and health – therefore the brand name.</p>
<p>Philadelphia and Pennsylvania do indeed have strong Quaker roots. Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, a wealthy, well-connected Englishman who had joined the Religious Society of Friends as an adult. He convinced the King to give him a charter for a colony in North America which would be a Quaker homeland, thus lessening social conflicts in England between Anglicans and Quakers, and in New England between Puritans and Quakers. That colony became Pennsylvania, its principal city was Philadelphia, and its first university (established by Benjamin Franklin, like almost everything else) the University of Pennsylvania. </p>
<p>There are still lots of Quakers living in and around Philadelphia. They no longer dominate the city’s Establishment like they once did, but if you took a random sample of influential, powerful people, a disproportionate number would be Quakers. There are at least a dozen Quaker schools in the area, and many more Meetings (i.e., churches), as well as two pretty famous colleges that consider themselves Quaker institutions – Swarthmore and Haverford.</p>