<P> The attraction of a life free from persecution in the New World led to a gradual Dutch Quaker migration . English Quakers in Rotterdam were permitted to transport people and cargo by ship to English colonies without restriction and throughout the 18th century many Dutch Quakers immigrated to Pennsylvania . There were an estimated 500 Quaker families in Amsterdam in 1710 but by 1797 there were only seven Quakers left in the city . Isabella Maria Gouda (1745--1832), a granddaughter of Jan Claus, took care of the meeting house on Keizersgracht but when she stopped paying the rent the Yearly Meeting in London had her evicted . The Quaker presence disappeared from Dutch life by the early 1800s until reemerging in the 1920s, with Netherlands Yearly Meeting being established in 1931 . </P> <P> William Penn, a favorite of King Charles II, received ownership of Pennsylvania in 1681, which he tried to make a "holy experiment" by a union of temporal and spiritual matters . Pennsylvania made guarantees of religious freedom, and kept them, attracting many Quakers and others . Quakers took political control but were bitterly split on the funding of military operations or defenses; finally they relinquished political power . They created a second "holy experiment" by extensive involvement in voluntary benevolent associations while remaining apart from government . Programs of civic activism included building schools, hospitals and asylums for the entire city . Their new tone was an admonishing moralism born from a feeling of crisis . Even more extensive philanthropy was possible because of the wealth of the Quaker merchants based in Philadelphia . </P> <P> The Friends had no ordained ministers and thus needed no seminaries for theological training . As a result, they did not open any colleges in the colonial period, and did not join in founding the University of Pennsylvania . The major Quaker colleges were Haverford College (1833), Earlham College (1847), Swarthmore College (1864), and Bryn Mawr College (1885), all founded much later . </P> <P> In 1657 some Quakers were able to find refuge to practice in Providence Plantations established by Roger Williams . Other Quakers faced persecution in Puritan Massachusetts . In 1656 Mary Fisher and Ann Austin began preaching in Boston . They were considered heretics because of their insistence on individual obedience to the Inner Light . They were imprisoned and banished by the Massachusetts Bay Colony . Their books were burned, and most of their property was confiscated . They were imprisoned under terrible conditions, then deported . </P>

The quakers of pennsylvania were involved in prison reform