There is a remote Quaker connection with one line of Kings, but it isn't the Quaker religion. Three sons of Gen. John Bertley King who lived in Ravenna, Portage, Ohio in the 1860s were among 6 men who founded the Quaker Oats Company. The name, Quaker Oats," was picked in 1873 and named for the impressive Quaker blacksmiths of so deftly created the machinery to slice the oats so thinly. My great-grandfather was John Bertley King Jr., one of the three brothers. Unfortunately, they sold the company in 1876 at a time when it had about 40 employees. Two owners later in the 1890s the company begin to grow rapidly and by the turn of the century the name was a household word.