American History: The Pennsylvania Colony

The Pennsylvania Colony was American before it was cool to be American. The Colony of Pennsylvania is important to American History because the colonists there held the beliefs that later molded the Constitution and many of modern Americans beliefs. The belief of freedom of religion is one of the first reasons colonists came over to the Americas in the first place. But unlike the rest of the colonists the Quakers of Pennsylvania really believed that everyone had the right to practice their own religion. This is unlike the rest of the colonies. The people of the Pennsylvania colony also knew the importance of technology and knowledge. With out technology and higher education America would vary greatly from what we know as America today.
A major

belief of the Quakers, the majority of Pennsylvania colonists, was religious freedom. The hatred of Quakers in England was a huge reason William Penn, the founder of the colony, made the colony a safe place to practice any religion. The Quaker religion was not only hated in England but in the colonies as well, Patricia Hudson explains in Penning a Legacy, “In Puritan controlled Boston, for example two Quaker women were hanged when they refused to stop preaching in public. ” William Penn would not stand for this kind of treatment of his fellow Quakers. So Penn used the debt the King of England owed his father to obtain a parsel of land where he and his fellow Quakers could live. In Patricia Hudson’s Penning a Legacy she explains, “Having experienced firsthand the horrors of forced religious conformity, Penn dreamed of showing the world that peaceful coexistence among diverse religious groups was possible and that a single, state supported religion was not only unnecessary but undesirable. ” The founding fathers also embraced this idea later on when establishing our government. Although now days we do have hints towards Christianity in our Government, there is not a government sponsored religion. Although Penn’s philosophy was not completely carried through, the basis of it is part of the reason America is looked at as safe haven for immigrants from all over the world.
When other colonies were only worried about farming and producing goods for England, Pennsylvania focused on education, technology, and the advancements in the sciences.

This is proven in Job Roberts Tyson in his writing of The social and intellectual state of the colony of Pennsylvania prior to the year 1743, “A survey of the state of knowledge, principles, and taste among the early inhabitants of Pennsylvania, will show how far a love of science, as well as letters, had been implanted in the colony at the first settlement. ” This mindset is not seen in a lot of the colonies and as a result led to Pennsylvania being the hub of knowledge in early America. This mindset is shown again in Tyson's writing, “A printing press was in operation in Philadelphia, so early as the year 1686. This is only four years after the settlement by Penn, while forests were standing in primeval wilderness around the colonists, and before huts were substituted for the caves which first sheltered them from the inclemencies of winter. ” While other colonies were just focused on surviving the Pennsylvania colonists were focused on improving their minds. This was taken to the extreme as in the quote. You can tell from the quote that they built their printing press before they even built suitable houses. This extreme mindset can still be seen today at the prestigious institutions of higher education in Pennsylvania, such as the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State. This mindset is part of the reason the education is such a priority in America. We also have to thank this mindset for crafting the mind of the Great Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin spent most of his life in the colony of Pennsylvania where he became the man who helped institute both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of

America.