The Iowa social reform experiment had its background in social reform legislation dating from the State's early territorial period. It aimed to provide a rural and homelike setting and program that would help transform wayward girls into pious and industrious young women who would be prepared to carry out their prescribed role as future wives and mothers. The program's first phase occurred when State officials established a Juvenile Reform School for both boys and girls in 1868. Four years later the State founded the school specifically for females; it became the first of its kind west of the Mississippi River and only the second such school in North America. This reformatory reflected Iowans' beliefs of the proper roles for females; its behavioral standards were based on these beliefs. The school's first superintendent, Lorenzo D. Lewelling, and his wife Angie, the school's first matron, had a crucial influence on the school. Lorenzo Lewelling devised the school's program; dealt with elected officials, the courts, police, and the newspapers; and located employers for the residents when they left the institutions. Angie Lewelling supervised the staff, dealt with vendors, and corresponded with former inmates. The school admitted 804 females by the end of the century. The majority were sent for reasons of incorrigibility, vagrancy, larceny, disorderly conduct, and prostitution. Most came from lives that included extreme poverty, employment at an early age, and the death of one or both parents. Most were poor but respectable when they returned to society. Reference notes, reference lists, and index