Laura Spelman Rockefeller (1839–1915) was raised in the Midwest, living a short time in Burlington, Iowa before her family moved to Ohio. Her father Harvey Buel Spelman was a member of the state legislature (it's unclear whether in Ohio or Iowa) and an abolitionist who was part of the Underground Railroad. As a young woman, she was a school teacher at the Hudson Street School in Cleveland, Ohio where she was promoted to assistant principal at the age of 22.

She met John D. Rockefeller, then a bookkeeper, in an accounting class, and they married in 1864. John would go on to found the Standard Oil Company and become one of the wealthiest Americans of all time. As an adult, Laura was a well-known philanthropist, supporting many causes, including child development, education, public health, race relations, religion, and social welfare. In her will, she asked that other than a $450,000 bequest to family all of her wealth, $1,500,000, should be distributed by her executors to charities and educational institutions including what was then the Spelman Seminary and today's Spelman College, a leading HBCU. In 1918, her husband established the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial in her memory.

The foundation focused on building infrastructure for research and training in "child studies" with an emphasis on interdisciplinary research. by creating child studies institutes at a half dozen universities, including the Universities of Iowa and Minnesota, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Toronto, and Yale and Columbia Universities. In 1928 the Foundation was merged with the Rockefeller Foundation. 

At the UI, the funds were awarded in 1929 and accepted in a letter from President Jessup. In 1932, they were dedicated to the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station (ICWRS) by the Regents. Decades later, when the ICWRS closed, the funds were transferred to the Obermann Center.