"Between 1854 and 1929 an estimated 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, and homeless children were placed out during, what is known today as, the Orphan Train Movement. The name is derived from the children's situations, though they were not all orphans, and the mode of transportation used to move them across forty-seven states and Canada."
Iowa was one of many states in which the Orphan Trains stopped.
The Jackson County (Iowa) Historical Society Museum is the repository for a large collection of organized records from the orphan train movement. For more information, see: http://www.jciahs.com/sites/county-museum
The library's collections and services are available to all ISU students, faculty, and staff and Parks Library is open to the public.
